I Hate Americans aka Duo
by Mieren
Summary: What happens when you have more than one Maxwell? Besides Wufei going insane, that is. This is a jab at Duo, so please don't flame.
1. Chapter 1

I Hate Americans

Treize Khushrenada verily stormed into his private suite, his fists clenching and unclenching as though his fingers ached to wrap themselves around a certain braided idiot's throat.  He had just received a report and supporting photos that showed all of the Leos at the base had been the target of rather talented graffiti that clearly stated improbable commentary about his lineage.  Though he didn't need to see the final picture in the stack to know who was responsible, he glared at it anyways.  Grinning back at him was Duo Maxwell, flashing a paint-smeared victory sign at the camera from between his legs, where he was presenting the security camera a clear shot of his bared posterior.

Scowling, he stalked into his small office, looking up from the picture as a flash of movement caught his eye from near the window.  A muffled giggle and the tail end of a long chestnut braid reached him even as the intruder vanished into the night.  A muscle in Treize's cheek twitched.  Growling vile obscenities under his breath unfitting his education, he slapped the report in his hands onto the nearest desk and glared out the window, knowing full well that it was far too late to bother calling security.  Duo was long gone.  Treize's eyes flickered around his office, checking for pitfalls, hidden tripwires and tacks in his chair.  The screen of his computer caught his gaze and he groaned loudly.

Checking his chair for any signs of disassembly or cherry bombs, he gingerly sat in front of his computer and typed a few short commands.  Nothing happened.  Trying not to grind his teeth, he took his mouse in hand and quickly froze.  The pointer moved in a different direction from the one he had pulled the mouse.  Left was right and up was down.  Beginning to realize what had happened, he pecked a random key on the keyboard, watching as one of his icons lit up.  He tried to move across the icons with the arrows, but for the first few strokes nothing happened.  On the fourth stroke, a different icon was highlighted.  The tick in Treize's cheek got worse.  The mouse moved in the wrong direction and the keys were set to randomly select a character every time something was pressed.  He didn't need to check to know that the buttons on his mouse were in a similar state of disarray.

"Sir?"

Treize growled at the familiar voice, and spun quickly in his chair, ready to tear Zechs in two for walking in unannounced.  His anger died when he took in the state of the furious man.  Dripping wet and wearing only a towel around his waist, Zechs looked precisely as Treize had a moment ago, pissed beyond reason.  Despite himself, Treize's lips twitched towards a smile at the reason.  Zechs's hair was bright BLUE.  Treize took a deep breath and tried to steady himself.  He was certain that if he laughed, he'd be sporting a black eye at the very least.

"He put hair dye in the shampoo, didn't he?" Treize managed to say somewhat calmly.  He bit his tongue as he struggled not to smirk.

"Only in some of the bottles," Zechs growled darkly.  "The rest had a very potent hair remover.  He also threw paint balls into the laundry, so most of the uniforms on base are neon pink.  As for myself, he… cut the seats out of all of my boxers and pants while I was in the shower."  He stopped there, his cheeks pinking slightly as he looked away, growling something under his breath that Treize couldn't make out.  He was sure it wasn't complementary.

_The boy gets around, doesn't he?_ Treize thought darkly.  _Let's see.  It's been about five minutes since he left my office, so that means that another report should be coming in any minute now.  I wonder what part of the base he got to this time._

A knock on the door interrupted his train of thought.  Sighing, he buzzed in whoever was outside, already knowing that it had something to do with the black-clad plague.  Noin walked in with a strained look and a folder in her hands.  Silently, she held out another report, the edges of pictures peeking out of the edge of the very thick pile of sheets.  Sighing, Treize flipped to the first page and choked.

"What is it this time?" Zechs asked wearily, carefully watching Noin out of the corner of his eye.  The first person to laugh was going to die a slow painful death.

"He painted Tallgeese," Treize muttered, leaning back slightly in his chair.  He wasn't sure whether to send a squad of assassins after a certain pilot or laugh himself sick at the latest prank the spastic youth had inflicted on them.

"What's shocking about that?" Zechs asked, trying to peer over his shoulder at the report.  His eyes widened at the pictures.  Tallgeese had been painted, all right.  Now the machine was anatomically correct, down to the rendition of every curly hair.  He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.  "I'm not flying that until it's been repainted."

"Noin, send out a memo to everyone on base.  There's to be a large reward for anyone who can find a way to get Duo Maxwell out of our hair," Treize muttered.  "I'll be in the staff room in the North Wing."

"Right away, sir," Noin said crisply, turning on her heel and walking stiffly out of the room.  Treize watched her go with a strange look on his face.

"Did Duo…"

"He moved the security cameras into the women's showers and sent live feeds all over base," Zechs offered.  "She was in the showers at the time."

"Ah," Treize offered intelligently.  He shifted slightly in his seat, a blank look appearing on his features.

"Something wrong, sir?"

"Tell Noin to inform those present that I may be late to the meeting."

"Why is that?"

"It would appear that I've been superglued to my chair."

*     *     *

After carefully cutting off both his tailored pants and silk boxers, Treize stalked towards the North Wing staff room.  He fumed silently as he stormed the halls, almost going into convulsive fits of anger when a herd of small rodents tore through the halls and disappeared into various rooms and cracks in the wall.  He paused, forcibly reminding himself that he would not scream.  Managing to get his temper under control, he resumed his trek towards the hopefully useful meeting.  Rounding a corner found him face to face with a very pissed rutting elk.  Blanching, he quickly retreated from the direction he had come from, barely managing to slam a set of fire doors shut before a set of antlers found his kidneys.  He cursed again, wondering where in the seven hells Duo had found an elk in this region.  Maxwell was going to pay dearly.

_Thank god he didn't find a full grown African elephant,_ he thought sourly.  He grumbled again, thankful he hadn't said the bit about the elephant out loud.  No telling what cameras the boy had tapped into or planted.  Probably all of the ones on base plus a few extras in strategic locations and he most certainly didn't want to give the manic pilot any ideas.

Treize nearly went deaf when the speakers all over the base were suddenly activated.  He yelped in pain and covered his ears as the refrain of possibly the most annoying song in existence blared at over 300 decibels.

_EVERYBODY, GET ON THE FLOOR, LET'S DANCE!_

_DON'T FIGHT THE FEELING, GIVE YOURSELF A CHANCE!_

"Oh God no," he muttered, still trying to cover his ears as he verily sprinted to the meeting he had called.

_SHAKE-SHAKE-SHAKE!   SHAKE-SHAKE-SHAKE!_

_SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!  SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!_

"Make it stop," he whined to himself.

Staggering into the staff room, he found himself faced with seven hogtied scientists, each of them sporting a multicolored Mohawk.  Growling curses that were drowned out by the music, he began untying the men who immediately plugged their ears once freed.  One of them yelled something at him, but he couldn't hear it over the music.  Irritated beyond imagination, he settled on trying to read the man's lips.

"Let's go somewhere off base where it's safe to talk."

Nodding at the mouthed suggestion, he finished untying the last man and started for the door.  The scientists trailed behind him as he flung the doors open.  They were immediately greeted by a grinning maniac with a paintball gun.  A volley of neon orange paintballs flew at them with unerring accuracy, leaving behind glow-in-the-dark splotches and underlying bruises.  Before Treize could take a single step towards the cackling menace with earplugs, the boy was once again gone.

Nearly screaming in rage, Treize gave chase.  He ducked into a side corridor after the braided madman, managing to make out one screamed word as the pilot leapt into the ventilation system and disappeared again amid roaring laughter.

"Jumanji!!!"

Treize glared after him, disconcerted by the familiarity of the word.  Where had he heard the term 'Jumanji' before?  Something told him that it was vitally important that he remember.  He twisted his face up in concentration when a vague recollection of an ancient movie from the late twentieth century came to mind.  It had something to do with a game… and animals.  His eyes widened in horror when the floor began to tremble.

Frightened by the noise of the blaring music, if it could be called that, a herd of rather large animals rounded the corner in a clear stampede.  A single inane thought appeared in Treize's mind.

_Well, there's the elephant._

Treize barely had the sense of mind to flatten himself against the wall as the herd thundered past him.  Besides the elephant, he saw two zebras, a small pack of mountain goats, a young rhino and that blasted rutting elk that had attacked him only minutes ago.  He was sorely tempted to kick it as it went by, deciding against it for the sake of his health.  He rather liked his ribs.

Suddenly, he wondered if he had gone deaf.  The blaring refrain of the song he had been listening to on a loop for a long time no longer rang in his ears.  He decided he wasn't deaf when he could hear the retreating sounds of the stampede from a few halls down.  He sighed in relief and slumped against a wall.  It was about time someone fixed the rewiring of the intercom system anyway.  He swiveled his head to glare daggers at the last place he had seen the young maniac.

He was so busy glowering at the ventilation shaft Duo had disappeared into that he almost didn't hear the fiendish giggling in time.  Spinning, he pulled a gun out of the waist of his slacks and took aim at the corridor where the laughter was coming from.  He was watching that direction so intently that he didn't hear anyone approach him from behind until it was too late.  Slender hands snagged the hem of his shirt and wrenched it upwards, trapping his arms and head in the material and blinding him.  Cursing loudly, he tried to turn to face the maniac, only to find that somehow his shoelaces had been tied together.  He went down face first, yelping indignantly when his boxers were firmly snagged and yanked towards his skull.  Howling laughter retreated down the hall.

Ready to scream in frustration, Treize staggered to his feet unsteadily, tugging his shirt back down to free his arms.  He slipped his gun in his pocket to free his hands, irritably pulling his boxers from his lower ribs to his hips, wincing as he noted he would probably be walking funny for a little while after that particular wedgie.  Duo didn't know his own strength.

He was about to reach for his knotted laces when a water balloon filled with vegetable oil ruptured on his head.  A tick went of wildly in both his eye and cheek, looking strangely like a seizure.  Struggling to keep from having a nervous breakdown, he reached again for his laces, pausing when he saw that they had not been knotted.  They had been melted together.  Growling, he pulled his shoes off.

_How the hell does he do that?  Trained terrorist or not, this is ridiculous,_ he thought darkly.  What next?  The mobile suits were decorated with various designs and general graffiti, the computers were unusable, the better part of a zoo had been released indoors, the intercom had barely stopped blaring 'Shake Your Booty' at deafening levels and most of the officers at the base had been terrorized at least once.  What else could he possibly do in one night?

Rapidly approaching footsteps sounded from the direction Duo had disappeared and Treize raised his gun.  This was going to end now.  He barely pulled his shot when Zechs flew around the corner, his towel gone.  Following close behind him was Duo, wet towel in hand, snapping at the man with horrifying accuracy.  Judging by the array of red welts covering the former-blonde's backside, he had gotten in a few really good shots.  Belatedly, he raised his gun again, pulling his shot a second time when a wet towel smacked into his face and arm at the same time, fouling his shot and blinding him for the second time in so many minutes.  Cackling laughter disappeared into the ventilation system once more.

"I'm glad I found you," Zechs wheezed.  "He's been at that for ten minutes."

Treize froze.  "Ten minutes?"

"Yes sir.  I couldn't outrun him and every effort I made to fight him didn't turn out very well," he muttered, brandishing one arm covered in tic-tac-toe games.  Zechs paused when he saw the blank look on Treize's face.  "What is it?"

Treize shook his head.  He must have lost track of how long he had been standing there.  "Nothing.  He just gets around.  Let's just hope he leaves soon."

"Sir?"

Both men turned towards the source of the new voice, Zechs belatedly covering himself with the towel Duo had thrown at Treize and hiding behind the general, blushing madly.  Lady Une raised one eyebrow bemusedly before continuing.

"I've just been informed that Duo has been seen hotwiring a Leo."

"Finally," Treize muttered, leaning against the wall in relief.  "I thought he'd never leave."  Zechs squeaked as his cover moved and darted down the hall towards his private quarters, accidentally flashing Lady Une as he escaped.  She smirked.

"There's more, sir."

"What is it?"

"He didn't escape in a Leo."

Treize raised his head slowly, eyes narrowing.  "Then what did he escape in?"

"Ten Leos."

To Be Continued…

BTW people… I want commentary!  No commentary, no story.  This was just a teaser I posted because I'm mean.


	2. Chapter 2

Ten whooping, smirking and laughing figures cloaked in black hopped out of a stolen van and staggered into a small rundown shack.  There was much poking, slapping and snickering as they made their way inside, the one in lead flipping on the lights.  As a mass group, they entered the kitchen, chattering incessantly.

"Man, did you see his face?"

"Yeah.  You'd think no one ever took a blowtorch to his shoelaces before."

"That's nothing.  Did you see Tallgeese?"

"I did.  That was great."

"I still say we should have slipped aphrodisiacs in their water supply."

"No way.  What if we had still been there when they started to work?  We'd all have gone blind."

"Um… should we have left the Leos there?"

"Why not?  Treize deserved it."

"His private mountain cabin has seen better days."

"The positions we left those Leos in will give him a nosebleed for sure."

"Probably not Treize.  Wufei definitely, but not Treize."

"I still can't believe we all fit in his Ferrari."

"Speak for yourself.  You didn't have three people sitting on you."

"Hey, it beat being in the front seat."

"With what those two were doing up there?  Most definitely."

"Gripe, bitch, moan.  Get over it.  It was a cool car."

"No kidding.  Who knew Treize owned something like that?"

"Leaving it double parked in the handicapped spaces in front of the hospital in town was just too cool."

"I wonder if they'll actually give him a ticket."

"Do you think he'll find the fish?"

"In the engine or the tailpipe?"

"Both."

"No telling.  Maybe in a few days."

"Hell, by the time he gets it out of impound, he won't want it back."

"Hey, whose turn is it?"

"Mine, I think, but I have stuff to do."

"You suck, man."

"And if you're lucky, he swallows too."

"Pervert.  You stay out of this."

"What about you?  Up to it?"

"Up to it?  I'd hope not.  That's my job."

"Damn it, I told you to stay out of this."

"Love to go, but I hurt my ankle grappling with Zechs."

"Is it broken?"

"No but it's sprained bad enough that they'd notice.  I was only supposed to be out clubbing, ya know."

"They'll ask too many questions if you go."

"Damn.  Guess that means I'm up.  Well, I'm off then.  See you guys later.  We have got to do that again."

"No kidding.  It's been way too long since we've messed with Oz."

"They'll be in chaos for days over this."

"Only a few days?  Damn.  We've been slacking."

"How much more do you think we could have done?"

"You want a list?"

"Don't you two start!"

"Don't let those two start then!  God, we have to eat off that table!"

"Hey, we weren't bothering anyone."

"The hell you weren't!  Put your pants back on!  You too!"

"I thought you were supposed to be leaving!  Why are you on the table?"

"I think they're jealous.  Perhaps they want to join in…"

"You pervert.  Quit leering at us like that.  For the last time, the answer is no!"

"Fine, fine.  I'm outta here.  I guess I'm expected back anyways."

"Did you want something to take with you?  I can cook something."

"Nah, that's alright.  Quatre will have something by the time I get there.  You know how he is."

"Good point."

"We'll see you next time you go on a mission."

"Call us if you need anything."

"Sure thing, guys.  Later."

Leaving behind the chattering group, a single figure clad in priest's garb slipped back into the night, grinning widely as he hotwired the van for a second time.  The vehicle had to be ditched anyways before it was traced.  Besides, he didn't want to walk all the way to the new safehouse.  Just for giggles, he did donuts in the lawn for a few loops until the grass was history and the cabin was covered in mud before he sped off down the road.

After driving for a few hours, he ditched the van in a random parking lot and took to the road.  It was only an hour hike from where he was to the safehouse.  No point in stealing another vehicle now.  Whistling merrily, he started walking.

*     *     *

Still traumatized from the events of the night and the revelation that there had been at least ten menaces running amuck on base, Treize nearly forgot about the scientists waiting for him in the hall.  He blinked numbly when someone called his name and turned to face the seven men with their multicolored Mohawks.  One of them cleared his throat gently.

"General Khushrenada, we know something that may be of interest."

"What is it?" Treize asked wearily.

"We researched the history of the pilot of Deathscythe Hell, and we found that he was raised on L2."

"I already knew that," Treize huffed.

"Yes, sir.  But we found out recently that L2 is a huge genetic program in itself."

At that, Treize froze.  "Explain."

"Originally, scientists established a colony where they could work without regulation.  When the time came that laws were created that would limit their work, they continued underground.  There was a good deal of work concerning cloning at the time of Duo Maxwell's birth.  We believe that there may be as many as a dozen of him."

_That would explain a lot,_ Treize thought darkly.  "This information is to be classified as top secret."  He turned to leave, trying not to go into shock.

"Sir?  What do you want us to do about the boys?"

_I wish I knew,_ Treize lamented.  Aloud he said, "Continue your research on his… uh… their backgrounds for now.  Keep me posted of anything relevant."

With that, he moved towards one of his private rooms.  Hopefully the boys hadn't found this one.  He snapped commands at those he passed on his way, trying to get the base back into some semblance of order.  No matter how calm he tried to appear, he was worried.  If L2 was nothing more than a genetic experiment like they said, would the boys be capable of other things?  And what about the other colonies?  He ground his teeth in frustration.  If anything he suspected was true, there could be serious problems.

*     *     *

A slender figure dressed in priest's garb paused at the front door of the safehouse.  He had forgotten to get the key to the trick locks Heero had installed.  Shrugging, he ran his hands through his braid and pulled out a few slender pieces of metal.  Fifteen seconds later, the latch clicked and he was inside.  He immediately froze, his hand almost on the light switch and a gun barrel pressed to his forehead.  He grinned.

"Hey Hee-chan!  Ya didn't have to wait up for me, man!" he hooted, flipping on the light and heading unerringly for the kitchen.

"I didn't.  You tripped three alarms coming in," Heero snapped, stuffing his gun down the front of his spandex.  The braided pilot grinned wider.

"One day, man, that thing's gonna go off and you'll be speaking in soprano."

"Hn," Heero responded elegantly, glowering at him one last time before returning to his room.  It was almost too easy to scare off Wing's pilot when he didn't feel like explaining something.

Ignoring the grunt and glare he received for this teasing, he bounded into the kitchen, popping open the fridge to see what Quatre had left him.  Sure enough, a small feast was waiting for him.  He snagged a few random things and began gorging, making a quick note to find out what new security measures Heero had installed at each safehouse in the time he had been gone.  It would look bad if he kept tripping alarms.

"You make enough noise to wake the dead, Maxwell," Wufei snapped.

Hearing the irate voice above him, he glanced up at him and gave him a cheeky grin.  The Chinese pilot had obviously just gotten out of bed and looked a bit rumpled.  His normally immaculate hair was sticking up and mostly free from the small ponytail he always kept it in.  He made a point of assessing the other pilot's disheveled state.

"And apparently I've succeeded."

Wufei glared at him harder and ground his teeth.  The Deathscythe pilot swore he could hear enamel cracking.

"Kisama!  How could you set off those alarms?  You helped install them!"

Oops.  Someone was going to be in pain over that when he saw the others again.  There were certain bits of information he flat out needed to know.  He fought back a sigh and decided to change the subject and start on one of his favorite hobbies.  He was firmly convinced that if he could make the Chinese pilot's nose bleed enough in one night, he would pass out from blood loss.

"Sorry, Fei-kun," he said silkily, batting his eyelashes.  Wufei sputtered at the slaughtering of his name.  It was almost as much fun as making him nosebleed.  "How can I make it up to you?"  He blew his stuttering friend a kiss.

"Kisama!  Stop acting so dishonorable, Maxwell!" he snapped, trying to hide his blush and failing.  Seeing the pouting look directed at him, he blushed harder, reddening all the way to the roots of his hair.  "And don't call me Fei-kun!"

"Would you prefer 'koi'?"

"KISAMA!"

He couldn't help snickering as Wufei retreated, pinching the bridge of his nose as he ran for the bathroom.  It was almost too easy.  Poor Wufei.  Maybe he should go make it up to him in his own way.  He snickered harder as he cleaned up in the kitchen, thinking of things to do.  He grinned wider at what he planned to do.  Time to pay Wufei a visit.  Naked.

Done cleaning, he bounced back to the room he shared with Heero and stripped down to the buff, tossing his clothes haphazardly on the bed.  Heero blinked at him inquisitively and raised one eyebrow.  He snickered again.  It was hard to get that much expression out of spandexman.

"Just gonna see if Wufei's gotten back to sleep yet," he offered, winking.  He got the shock of his life a second later.  Heero smirked.  Ooh.  He was doing good.  Two expressions out of him in one night.  He offered his manic grin in return and hopped easily down the hall to the bathroom.

He didn't bother checking the doorknob, just knowing it would be locked.  He immediately picked the lock and slipped inside silently, eyes glued to Wufei.

"Sorry, Wu-man.  Didn't mean to upset you.  Can I make it up to you somehow?" he offered, leaning seductively against the wall.

Wufei turned to him when he started talking, ready to yell at him for slaughtering his name again.  He froze, eyes bulging and jaw slack.  Not quite upset enough.  The braided boy leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.  Wufei made a strangled noise and wobbled slightly.  Crimson spurted from each nostril and he promptly fainted.

He was still giggling over his success when he heard a sigh behind him.  He turned to see Quatre shaking his head wearily.

"Hey Q-man!  Why are you up?"

"You set off the alarms, Duo.  Besides, Wufei was swearing rather loudly," Quatre said softly, still staring at Wufei.  He barely remembered not to smirk at being addressed as 'Duo' even after all this time.  He had been sure that someone would have figured it out long ago.  "You enjoy doing that just a little too much."

"But it's fun!  You outta try it!"

"I don't think so," Quatre murmured, shaking his head.  "We should get him to bed before he wakes up and kills you."

"Ah, Q-man.  I didn't know you cared."

"I don't.  I just don't like cleaning out bloodstains."

"Too late for that," he smirked, looking pointedly at Wufei's still-bleeding nose.

When Quatre pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, the braided madman winked at him and tossed Wufei over his shoulder.  Quatre just sighed again and went back to the room he shared with Trowa.  The American paused to balance Wufei across his shoulders as the blond left.  The Chinese boy was a lot heavier than he looked.  He staggered slightly as he made his way down the hall to his friend's room, tossing him unceremoniously on the bed and stripping him to his boxers.  As an afterthought, he carefully unstitched the back seam in Wufei's white pants.  They were baggy enough that he probably wouldn't notice the hole for some time.  And when he finally noticed, he planned to be long gone.  Hawaii looked nice this time of year.  With Wufei out for his blood, Antarctica didn't look so bad either.

Finished terrorizing the raven-haired boy for the night, he slipped out the door and ran headfirst into Heero.  A very angry Heero.  He grinned weakly and tried to slip by.  A hand latched onto his arm and pulled him up short.

"What is it, Hee-chan?" he asked coyly.  Heero's expression darkened.

"I knew it was you," Heero hissed, his eyes promising death.  "That seam couldn't have come out on its own."

"Seam?" he asked innocently.  His mind was racing.  _Damn it, David.  What in the hell did you do to him this time?_  It clicked suddenly.  David had done to Heero what he had just done to Wufei.  And judging by Heero's expression, he hadn't noticed in time either.  He needed to contact the others and figure out what all had gone on.  David never gave them enough details, but Donovan was usually the one to suffer the consequences and being the masochist that he was, he didn't mind.

Noticing that Heero was still scowling at him, he gave him a shameless smile and pulled free of the death grip, bounding easily to their shared room and pulling on his oversized nightclothes.  He scrounged around enough to find his personal laptop before bouncing out of the room just as Heero stalked in.  Heero glared.  The braided pilot winked and continued on his merry way to the kitchen, snapping his modem link into the phone.  Hopefully no one would bother him at this time of night.  He dialed the private connection quickly and waited.  A moment later, a picture popped up on his screen, a smiling mirror image of himself staring back at him.

"Dustin here.  What's up, Darren?  Problems already?"

"I need to speak with David.  He apparently forgot to tell me a few important things, like the new security systems he installed and what he did to Heero."

"Ooh.  I bet that one cost you."

"Almost."

A second face appeared on the screen, frowning darkly.  Darren sighed and wished he could reach through the screen to strangle his brother.

"Hey Dante," Darren greeted.  "Isn't David there?"

"No.  He's on a mission and you've been called on one too," Dante informed him crisply.  Darren fought the urge to roll his eyes.  It was almost as though Dante was related to Heero with the way he acted about missions.

"Already?  Damn.  We need to swap out again.  Your turn, I guess."

"No, I'm out on another in a few minutes."

Darren paused.  "Daniel?"

"Mission."

"Demitri?"

"Mission."

"Dustin, what about you?"

"Can't do it, man.  The only one of us free at the moment is Duo," Dustin sighed.

"Shit," Darren muttered.  "His ankle's still hurt.  There's nothing to do about it now, I guess.  When can he be here?"

"He's already on the way," Dante said stiffly.  Darren frowned.

"Why didn't you tell me instead of letting me guess?"

"Because you didn't ask," Dante answered reasonably.  "Vacate immediately.  He'll be there in a few minutes."

"Right-O!  I'm out."

Darren popped the connection and frowned.  He couldn't ditch the computer in his room or he would be trapped from leaving again.  He'd just have to leave it here and hope that Duo found the thing.  Sighing loudly, he closed the laptop and slipped out the back door.  He'd get his mission orders when he got back to the other safehouse to collect his supplies.  Being so deep in thought, he didn't see steely cobalt eyes watching him as he disappeared into the night.

Heero glared after the retreating figure.  Who had he been talking to and why had that other person called him 'Darren'?  And who were the others he was listing?  He flipped open the computer and typed in a few quick commands, calling up the same line that had been open only moments before.  Almost immediately, a scowling image of Duo appeared on the screen.

"Damn it, Darren.  I told you to…  SHIT!!"

Heero stared slack-jawed as a spitting image of Duo dove out of sight of the camera image and the connection died.  He shook his head and scowled darkly.  So Duo thought of a new joke.  Despite himself, a smile appeared on his face.  That had been a pretty good one, too.  For a moment, he had almost believed that there were two of him.

"Hey Heero!" a cheery voice greeted behind him.  He almost jumped, but controlled himself to turn easily to face Duo, who grinned wider.

Duo's gaze trailed across the open laptop on the table and his smile flickered.  He almost looked nervous.

"Whacha doin' with my computer?" he asked carefully.

Heero snorted and shut it down, pushing the laptop at his friend.  "Funny, Duo.  How long were you planning that?"

Duo froze.  He had obviously seen something, but what?  He took the laptop in his hands, afraid to call the others but needing to know what Heero had found out.  He paused.  Heero had said it was funny.  What was funny?  Did he think it was some prank?  He decided to go with that.

"Quite a while," he answered, trying to keep the manic edge to his voice.  He relaxed when Heero snorted and headed back to his room.  Duo slumped to the wall in relief.  He hadn't broken G's orders yet.  No one knew.

He returned to his room after a few minutes of gathering his wits.  Whatever Heero had seen, he didn't believe it, so they should be safe for now.  Other than that, there was only on thing bothering him.  They hadn't had time to confer on what all had happened in the last few minutes.  He wondered absently what Darren had done in the short time he was here.  Being the resident hentai of the group, probably something to Wufei or Heero, and since the latter didn't seem overly upset, Wufei must have been targeted again.  He absently wondered with what as he stashed his laptop beneath the bed and began rooting around for his nightclothes.  After awhile, he just shrugged and decided to sleep in the buff.  It wouldn't be the first time.

Heero silently watched him, feigning sleep.  What was Duo looking for?  He had put on his nightclothes earlier.  His mind froze and he almost forgot his façade and sat up.  He barely managed to remain still.  Duo's clothes had changed and he couldn't find what he had been wearing moments ago.  He watched as Duo shrugged to himself and shucked his clothes, moving slowly towards the bed.  Why was he limping?  He had been fine earlier.  What was going on?  

To Be Continued…

Commentary appreciated, craved, needed… Ego is shriveling up and dying.  It fits in my room again and I can have that!  Please R&R!


	3. Chapter 3

Treize had finally begun to relax.  The base had returned to some semblance of order and there were repairmen working on his private mountain cabin.  After three days of desperate work, almost everything was repaired from the one night of damage the Maxwells had inflicted.  He pushed a pile of paperwork aside and was preparing to return to his quarters for some much deserved rest when Zechs walked unannounced into his office, as was the man's style.

He glanced up at his friend and tried to bite back a snicker.  After bleaching his hair over a dozen times, there were still hints of blue in the platinum strands.  The expression on Zechs' face, however, pulled his amusement up short.  He looked decidedly green.

"What is it, Zechs?" he asked, beginning to worry.  The last time he had seen that look on the man's face was a month ago when one of the Maxwells had apparently spiked the base's water supply with a very powerful laxative and then sealed all of the toilet seats on base shut with massive amounts of epoxy.

"We… have reports from the data files from L2," he said slowly, looking sicker by the moment.  Treize was beginning to wonder if the food had been poisoned again.  Not two weeks ago, everyone on base had been urinating blue.

"And?" Treize pressed, though he wasn't certain he wanted to know.

"The pilots from L2 were part of a cloning experiment," he said stiffly.

Treize sighed.  He had already known that.  "Anything else?"

"They were created at one of the largest labs on L2."

"And?" Treize grated.  He just _knew_ that there was something that Zechs was neglecting to tell him.  It almost looked like he was afraid to say it aloud for fear of bringing down the wrath of the gods.  Zechs opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed and tried again.  This time he managed to spit it out.

"There are at least twelve hundred of him."

Treize blinked and stared into space for a moment.  Surely it was impossible.  There was no way in heaven or hell that there could be that many of the little terrors running loose.  For a moment, his mind ran in circles, refusing to accept what he had heard, thinking of any possible way that he could have heard wrong.  Eventually, the message took hold in his mind.  As the words slowly but surely began to sink in, he did the only thing a sane man in his position could do.

He fainted.

*     *     *

Dustin peered over Dante's shoulder as the latter typed frantically, a slightly maniacal grin on his face.  He watched as the best hacker in the group altered the links the Oz base had established with L2 to their own personal databanks they had created for this express purpose.  Dante paused in his typing, the smirk on his face shifting to an all out grin.  Dustin moved back a few paces.  The last time he had seen that look, three of them had ended up on reconnaissance missions watching each other's movements in the middle of boiling temperatures in the Amazon and not realizing who they were chasing for six days.

Curiosity finally got the better of him and Dustin peeked over Dante's shoulder again and choked on his tongue.

"Now that was just _mean_!" he hooted.  "Even for you, man, that was mean!"

"Hn.  If they're dumb enough to believe it, they deserve the heart attacks," Dante smirked.  "Serves them right for trying to hack into our personal lives."

"They'll be in chaos for days over this," Dustin snickered.

"Our mission was only to distract them," came the once again solemn reply.

"Then mission accomplished, I'd say."

"Hn," Dante replied with a faintly amused edge to his grunt.  He almost wished he could see Treize's face over this.  A smirk embedded firmly on his features, he continued in his task of making life at Oz utterly miserable.

A few minutes later, he tapped into Oz's databanks, a grin coming to his face.  Dustin looked over and arched one eyebrow in question, receiving a wider grin in response.

"Oz has found the little addition to our family."

_Little addition, my ass,_ Dustin thought.  He grinned nonetheless.  "And?"

"Treize has just been checked into the infirmary."

Dustin burst out laughing, a few tears seeping from his eyes.  After a few moments, he decided to add to the chaos and whipped out his cell phone.  His fingers flew over the numbers, tapping into a secure line that they shared.  He immediately received five responses.

"This is Demitri.  Do you need something?"

"Deut.  What can I do ya for?"

"David here.  This better be good."

"Donovan reporting in.  What's up?"

"This is Duo's stomach, as his brain is on vacation.  Please leave a message after the growl."

Dustin grinned.  His target hadn't left yet.  "Just need Don-baby!  You four can go back to what you were doing."

"Don't bother me again unless you need something.  David out."

"Well, back to redirecting the plumbing at Oz then," Deut smirked.  "Later."

"I almost fear what you're up to.  I want details later, man.  Duo out."

"I'm not leaving for another hour, so just call if you need anything," Demitri offered, closing the connection.

"So what do you want me to do?" Donovan asked as soon as they were off the line.  Knowing Dustin, it was going to be good.  He was easily as insane as Duo.

"How much do you know about genetics?" Dustin asked.

At this, both Donovan and Dante paused in what they were doing and openly wondered about his sanity.  Dustin could almost feel Dante's eyes glued to his back in question.  For an answer, he just grinned.

"A bit… Why?" Donovan answered hesitantly.

"Well, we're tinkering with the information Oz has access to about our personal backgrounds.  They know that we're from the one experimental colony, so we've just been padding that a bit.  Right now they think that there are twelve hundred of us."

Choking laughter met this announcement.

"And?"

"Treize fainted."

More laughter.

"What do you want to know then?  I think I know where you're going with this and that could be a lot of fun."

Dustin grinned.  "I'm thinking something about genetic tampering, but I don't know how to enter the information and have it sound real."

"DNA integration in a multicellular eukaryotic system," Donovan smirked.  "There's no such thing, at least not on the levels you're talking about, but I can fake it."

"Sounds good," Dustin said, pushing Dante out of the chair and typing madly while the other boy just peered over his shoulder with an ever-widening grin.  "Keep going, man."

"All right.  Now here's what you'd theoretically do.  Introduce a plasmid through electroporation to an egg cell.  No, scratch that.  To the germ cells of both parental lines so that all of the eggs and sperm produced will carry the genes of interest.  Homologous recombination with a double crossover in the DNA would integrate the sequence into the genome permanently.  And then…"

*     *     *

Hours later, Zechs went limp in his seat, his eyes wide and jaw twitching as he stared unseeing at the information on his computer.  The boys had been created off of a series of eggs derived from the same woman, whose germ cells had undergone a great deal of tampering.  Same tampering with the father.  They were brothers, not clones.  His eyes grew wider with every line he read of the outline of what had been done to create them.  Crosses with animal lines, mostly feline and canine?  Wolf, cougar, panther, bear, jackal, cheetah, lion…  The list of predators that supplied the target genetics continued for several pages, small descriptions of what was taken from each supplied.

Lips moving silently, he began scanning down through the lists of their capabilities and descriptions in general.  Running speed average of fifty-five miles an hour.  Able to jump over obstacles forty feet in height.  Able to lift up to ten times their body weight and bend steel with their bare hands.  Many lacking an entirely human appearance.  Extreme tendency towards bloodlust.  His breathing grew ragged and his face pale.  He could feel his heart rate becoming erratic.

Knowing he would be unable to say any of this aloud without passing out, the blond quickly printed the more important information and sprinted to the infirmary where Treize was still resting.  The general needed to know what they were up against.

He was only dimly aware of Noin asking him if he was alright as he staggered past her down the hall.  Waving one hand in her direction to dismiss her, he lurched into the infirmary and nearly collapsed near where Treize was lying.  The general took the papers from the blonde's shaking hands and froze.  The blood drained from his face and he could feel his chest constricting.  At the final line at the last page, he convulsed, collapsing once again on the infirmary bed.  Zechs scanned his eyes down the final page he had printed, his eyes going wide as he realized he had printed out part of their mission information.  His eyes rolled back in his head and he joined the general in la-la land.

Staring back innocently was a piece of paper listing various physical statistics and a single phrase at the bottom from their superior.

All units scheduled for immediate deployment.

*     *     *

"And… we got him!" Dustin crowed, pumping one fist into the air.  "Zechs is unconscious and Treize is in a coma!"

Dante guffawed, pausing in uploading the viruses into Oz's security system to allow for David and Daniel to enter unopposed.  They needed information from Oz's main databank and had to get it manually.  Unfortunately for them, Oz finally became irritated with their systems being perpetually hacked and now kept important information on computers that specifically did not have outside links.

"Lemme see," Dustin drawled.  "Duo is busy driving Heero nuts, so he's out.  Demitri and Donovan are changing all of the access codes at the base, so they're busy.  Deut is setting off various alarms to keep security confused.  David and Daniel are making their way towards the main computer terminal.  I still can't believe that G paired them up.  Blood will be flowing before the night's over.  We're here, so that just leaves Darren and Derrick.  Hmm… I wonder if they'll do it.  Well… of course they'll do IT, but will they do what I want?"

"Do what?" Dante snapped.  "They're busy keeping the base occupied so that David and Daniel can get through, in case you've forgotten."

Dustin waved his hand in a pacifying gesture.  "Okay, okay.  I'll do it."  At the glare he received he continued hurriedly.  "Do you seriously need _my_ help hacking into the Oz security system?"

Dante paused, turning back to his computer in consideration.  "No, I don't," he admitted stiffly.  "What are you planning?"  When he received no response, he glanced around the room to see Dustin rifling through a box he had pulled out of the closet.  "What are you looking for?"

A grin appeared across his face as he turned to face Dante, his prize held up in triumph in his hands.  Despite himself, Dante grinned back, snickering quietly at the Halloween paints and various costume pieces in Dustin's hands.  Last year, Daniel had been badgered into dressing like a werewolf from some twentieth century movie for no better reason that to torment him.  At the same time, they had managed to force David into a kitten costume.  The language they had used that day should have made the paint peel from the walls.  The seething pair had nearly killed each other and everyone else involved before the night was over.  Now, Dustin was brandishing Daniel's costume with malicious glee.

"Forget the officers being unconscious," Dustin smirked, pulling on seemingly random pieces of fabric and artificial fur.  He spent a great deal of effort tinkering with the make-up, fake claws and fangs, all the while grinning just a little too widely.  "I'm going to go for a seizure."

"And I'm going to tap into Oz's security cameras," Dante chuckled.  "Duo will kill us if we don't get him some pictures."

*     *     *

Dustin took a deep breath and hunkered down further into the shadows.  As much as he was looking forward to terrorizing the base, he was going to wait until the armed guards passed by him before continuing.  He watched them walking calmly by, chatting carelessly.  A water pipe broke above them, showering them with scalding water.  Deut's work, no doubt about that.  Dustin blinked and grinned wider, feeling the false muzzle strapped to his face shift as well.  The three men scattered, swearing loudly.

An instant later, an explosion sounded a ways down the hall and Dustin had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.  That would be Derrick and Darren.  Still cursing, the soldiers glared once last time at the broken pipe and ran towards the sound of the blast.  Naturally, the other two would be long gone.  He was about to break for cover when two figures sprinted past him from the direction the soldiers had gone, hooting merrily.  Dustin hopped out behind them and easily caught up.  Derrick caught sight of him first and jumped at least three feet in the air, cursing rabidly and scrabbling for his gun.  Darren stared at him in shock before recognizing the braid that Dustin had purposefully left visible and cracked up laughing.

"What do you think you're doing?" Darren wheezed, wiping the tears from his eyes.  Derrick just glared sullenly at him, embarrassed at having been scared.

"Well," Dustin drawled.  "Due to our tampering, Oz thinks that there are twelve hundred Maxwells running loose that have been crossbred with various predators.  So I'm just out to have a little fun with the idiots on base that know about it."

"You mean you're out to have fun with Treize and Zechs," Derrick corrected.

"Either way."

"I'll never understand your fascination with torturing those two."

"Well, it is amusing," Dustin supplied.

"Very," Darren agreed.

"Now, if you'll be so kind as to excuse me, I have an infirmary to raid."

"Sure thing," Darren smirked.  "We'll clear the way."

Still smirking, the three split ways, Dustin taking a roundabout route towards the infirmary.  Sure enough, the way was already cleared.  Scorch marks marred the walls and the floor was flooded, speaking of Derrick's pyromaniac tendencies and possibly Deut's tampering with the water lines.  Just before reaching his destination, he dropped to all fours and loped a little clumsily towards his goal.  Skidding through the door of the infirmary, he made a snapping motion at the first set of ankles he saw.  A nurse shrieked and leapt back, clutching at her heart.

The shriek managed to rouse Zechs from his unconscious state.  He glanced around the room groggily, his pale blue eyes bulging when he saw Dustin.  Yelping, he scrambled across the bed when Dustin lunged for it.  The two barely managed to keep from crashing into each other.

Grinning under his make-up and facemask, he began carefully working the mask with the muscles of his face and the controls in his mouth.  The muzzle twisted into a snarl, which he supported with a realistic sounding growl.  He lowered his head, watching comprehension dawn on the blonde's face as he braid slipped over his shoulder and into plain view.  Dustin waited for the expression of disbelief and horror before howling loudly and leaping at the blond for a second time.

Crying out and reaching for a firearm that wasn't there, Zechs only managed to tumble backwards onto Treize's bed and wake the older man from his 'coma' for a moment.  Treize's eyes fluttered open, the first thing in his vision a snarling wolf-like creature with a long chestnut braid.  Pinned by Zechs, unable to move and facing a vision from a nightmare or bad horror movie, Treize did the only thing that seemed appropriate.  He pushed Zechs towards Dustin and ran for his life.

Bored with torturing the nearly comatose blond, Dustin veered sharply around the man and ran towards Treize as he bolted from the infirmary and down the hall.  For several turns and intersections, he followed doggedly at the older man's heels, snapping and howling.  They rounded yet another corner and Dustin skidded to a halt and frantically backpedaled.  Twenty Oz soldiers with weapons drawn were waiting for them.

_Zechs,_ he thought darkly.  _I forgot about him.  He must have called them._

Shots ricocheted off of the floor and reinforced walls.  Dustin dropped all pretense of moving on all fours and sprinted down the hall, desperate to lose the men chasing him.  He had no doubt that he could do it if he wasn't shot by some stray soldier.  He was fast.  Not nearly as fast as Deut, but he was fast enough.  Turning a corner suddenly, he leapt for a ventilation shaft he liked to use and scrambled inside out of sight.  Only seconds behind him, he could hear soldiers thundering down the halls, branching out to locate their target.

Panting softly, he began worming his way to the roof of the building.  It was an intricate path to get there, but Oz hadn't figured it out yet and was unlikely to be prepared to stop him there.  Grinning once again, he began his ascent through the ducts and walls.  He was almost out when he heard the intercom tapped into again.  He couldn't help but grin as the bawdy lyrics began blaring through the building.  That had to have been Darren, or he'd eat his braid.

_EAT, BITE, FUCK, SUCK, GOBBLE, NIBBLE, CHEW,_

_NIPPLE, BOSOM, HAIR-PIE, FINGER-FUCK, SCREW,_

_MOOSE PISS, CAT PUD, ORANGUTAN TIT,_

_SHEEP PUSSY, CAMEL CRACK, BIG LION SHIT._

_I WENT TO A PARTY AND WHAT DID THEY DO?_

_THEY TOOK OFF THEIR SOCKS AND THEY TOOK OFF THEIR SHOES,_

_THEY TOOK OF THEIR SHIRTS AND THEY TOOK OF THEIR PANTS,_

_I HAD A HUNCH WE WEREN'T GONNA' DANCE._

Laughing himself sick, Dustin continued his ascent.  Like their last raid, they had placed the music at deafening levels, only this time the song was dirty as opposed to merely irritating.  He distantly wondered where Darren had found it.  Chuckling, he broke into the open air and disappeared into the darkness, listening to the chaos left behind him.

_EAT, BITE, FUCK, SUCK, GOBBLE, NIBBLE, CHEW,_

_NIPPLE, BOSOM, HAIR-PIE, FINGER-FUCK, SCREW,_

_MOOSE PISS, CAT PUD, ORANGUTAN TIT,_

_SHEEP PUSSY, CAMEL CRACK, BIG LION SHIT._

_EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY'S ASS WAS BARE._

_NO BRAS LEFT, JUST A QUEER OVER THERE._

_THE WHOLE DAMN THING DIDN'T PHASE ME A BIT--_

_I JUST JUMPED ON THE PILE AND GRABBED SOME TIT…_

To Be Continued…

Here's the next section.  More strangeness to come soon…  Tell me what you think!

***The lyrics above are from "Eat Bite" by John Valby.  This is a real song, not just a figment of my perversion.


	4. Chapter 4

Heero tried to remain indiscrete when he heard a small beeping noise coming from Duo's pocket.  Duo blinked and fished out a small cell phone, listening silently for a moment before rattling off his greeting.

"This is Duo's stomach, as his brain is on vacation.  Please leave a message after the growl."  Again, he paused for an indeterminate length.  Suddenly, he smirked.  "I almost fear what you're up to.  I want details later, man.  Duo out."

It took all of his self-control not to ask Duo right there who had been on the phone.  It had sounded like there were several people on the phone and Duo had mostly been listening in.  Heero stared hard at his computer screen.  He'd never given any thought to Duo's seemingly random calls before, but now that he thought about it, he got a lot of them like that.  He cautiously flicked his gaze towards the braided pilot, catching a glimpse of his backside as Duo carefully left the room, desperately trying to hide the fact that he was limping.

It was obvious his ankle was hurt badly.  Even if Heero hadn't noticed a constant shortage of ice in the freezer and the absence of one of the braces from their medical supplies, he couldn't miss the fact that Duo had stopped wearing his shoe as his foot was so swollen that he couldn't force the thing on.  Not that he hadn't tried, if the muffled whimpering was any indication when Duo got dressed that morning.

He waited until the footsteps disappeared down the hall before he stopped typing and ghosted out of the room after the American.  Duo wasn't hard to follow, as slowly as he was moving.  His gaze was so focused that he missed the shadow slipping behind him into his room and back out only seconds later.  A loud beeping filled the air and Heero jerked slightly, turning back towards his computer.  Arriving there, he scowled darkly.  He had a message on his computer that had just been sent in.  That wouldn't have bothered him except for the fact that it had somehow managed to crash his computer.  Still glowering, he set about fixing his system.

Deut watched him carefully before sprinting silently from the favorite Maxwell hiding place towards the kitchen, still wondering how it was so infernally easy to distract Heero.  Duo looked up as one of his many mirror images entered the room.

"Where have you been?" Duo asked softly.  "I've been going insane here."

"Sorry about that.  We agreed that whoever got out the fastest would replace you," came the slightly sheepish reply.  "Darren is just down the street with a car."

"Well, I'm off then.  Quatre and Trowa are out getting supplies.  Wufei is still hiding in his room.  Darren undid the seam of his pants and he's mortally embarrassed, so we won't be seeing him for a while.  Good luck with Heero.  He's been watching me like a hawk.  I think that Sir Grunts-a-lot is beginning to suspect."

"Damn," Deut muttered, watching as Duo waved and disappeared silently out the back door.  Taking in Duo's immaculate appearance, Deut headed for the shower, duffle bag of general supplies in hand.  It would look bad if Heero came into the kitchen and was greeted with a vision of dirt, blood and general grime of someone that had obviously been traveling and fighting very recently.

The door of the bathroom had barely clicked shut when Deut heard Heero come stomping out of his room, obviously furious that his precious laptop had suffered a massive crash.

_Not that I would know anything about that,_ Deut smirked, stripping and stuffing the filthy black outfit into the duffle bag.  Luckily, there was a spare one in there.  A clean one.  Stepping under the scalding water, Deut finally began to relax after the stress of worrying over Duo during an already tiring mission.

A loud banging permeated the bathroom and Deut jumped slightly.

"Yes?"

"Why are you taking a shower at this time of day?" Heero demanded.

_Damn, he's acting strange, even for him.  Duo's right, he's getting weird on us._  "No reason, Hee-chan.  Just felt like a shower."

There was a pause and for a moment, Deut wondered if Heero had left.  A click echoed loudly in the stillness, the door to the bathroom opening after having been expertly picked.  Deut froze in fear.

"A duffle bag and a trail of dusty footprints to the shower?" Heero asked acidly.  Deut began to calculate the risk of wrapping in the shower curtain and making a run for it.  Heero forestalled any such action by ripping back the shower curtain roughly and leveling his gun towards the figure pressed against the back of the shower in shock.  Heero froze, so stunned that he actually dropped his gun.

"Um, I can explain?" Deut tried shakily, still trying to cover up with anything in hands reach.  A towel, the shower curtain, a partially unraveled braid, anything.

Heero just stared.  Standing before him was someone who couldn't look less like Duo, starting with the uninjured ankle and raising up to slimly curved hips and rather buxom breasts.  The face was almost a mirror image of what Duo's would have been, but was somehow, indescribably, softer.  More feminine.  Deut made another grab for a towel, this time managing to get it since Heero was too stunned to stay in her way.  Wrapping in it firmly and flipping off the water, she pushed past Heero and snagged her duffle, heading unerringly for the door while he was too dumbfounded to stop her.  No such luck.

A firm hand shot out and snagged Deut's arm, pulling her up short in her escape attempt and pushing her forcibly into the wall.  She found herself staring into baffled cobalt eyes, swallowing nervously when he pushed down the top edge of her towel so as to stare more openly at what were obviously very real, very large, breasts.

Deut would have laughed at the expression on his face right then if she hadn't known that she was completely dead on several levels.  If the others didn't kill her, G or Heero would.  Knowing she was dead already, she slipped one hand into her duffle out of Heero's line of vision and pushed the emergency button on their communicator.  At the very least, the others needed to know what to expect.

She was brought out of her worrying when the hands holding her pinned shifted ever so slightly.  Apparently done staring for the moment, Heero raised his eyes to meet slightly hysterical violet.

"Who are you?" he asked slowly.

"Duo Maxwell," she answered reflexively.

"Your real name."

Deut didn't answer immediately, trying instead to gage his reaction.  He looked so lost and confused at the moment that it was almost adorable enough to make her forget that he was likely to kill her if he didn't like her answer.  She decided not to try to worm her way out of this.  It was undignified and besides, the Maxwells never lied.  That didn't mean she would tell him everything, however.  Omitting a large amount of information wasn't the same thing as lying.

"Deut Maxwell," she sighed, looking away.  When he opened his mouth to protest again at her insistence at keeping the last name, she elaborated slightly.  He would get this much out of her anyways within the next few minutes.  "I'm Duo's sister."

"Sister?" Heero repeated dumbly, still too shocked to come up with a question.  Something seemed to be eluding his mind.  Something important.

"Twin, actually," she responded.

Heero shook his head to clear it, a conversation he had overheard several days ago suddenly registering in his mind.  Several names came to mind.

"Who is Darren?"

Deut froze.  How in the hell did Heero know about Darren?  He hadn't said anything about being detected.  She shook her head.

"What about Dustin?  Or David?" he continued angrily, shaking Deut slightly when her only response was to pale slightly.  "How about Dante, Daniel or Demitri?  How many of you are pretending to be Duo?" he demanded.  Heero paused suddenly, something else worming its way into his mind.  Cobalt eyes narrowed.  "How many of you are there?  Just from the names I know, there are eight, assuming that 'Duo' isn't just a code name.  I know that I don't have all of them, either.  How many?"

Suddenly, Heero was pulled back and thrown to the floor somewhat violently.  He looked up numbly, staring at another two sets of violet eyes beside Deut.  One of the braided figures was holding up the other, who was favoring one foot heavily.  Deut scurried behind them and hastily began wrapping her chest and donning her clothes.  Refusing to be intimidated, Heero scowled darkly.

"How many of you are there?" he asked again.

"There are three of us," Duo responded.  _One me, one Darren and one Deut,_ he added silently.  It wasn't exactly a lie, since Duo could honestly interpret the question several ways and answer whichever version he chose.  He could have also assumed that Heero was only asking how many were in the house at that particular moment.  He knew what Heero meant, but that didn't mean he couldn't purposely misinterpret the question.  Deut, fully dressed but still slightly miffed, slipped up on his other side and helped support him.

"What about the others I listed?" Heero demanded, glaring at Deut.

"We have contacts and support outside of you four," Duo answered easily, since Deut still seemed to be too shocked to answer.

"Why does every name begin with the same letter?" Heero asked suddenly.  For an answer, the third braided madman smirked at him.

"Because G thought it was funny," he responded.  "I'm Darren, by the way."

Heero stared at him strangely for a moment.  "You were the one torturing Wufei, right?" he said slowly.

"All of us torture Wufei," Duo retorted.  "It's fun."  When Heero's attention focused on him, he shrugged, seeing the question before the Japanese boy could voice it.  "And yes, I'm Duo.  We use my name since I'm the first one you met."

Heero opened his mouth to ask more questions, but Darren just winked at him and transferred Duo completely to Deut's support.  He stripped to the buff and all but ran down the hall.  Heero watched him leave with a slightly baffled expression.  Duo and Deut issued him identical smirks and Duo began counting.

"Three… two… one…"

"KISAMA!!!  MAXWELL!!!"

Two sets of footsteps thundered down the hall towards them.  Duo and Deut calmly moved out of the way, watching in amusement as Darren skipped easily in.  He was followed immediately by Wufei, who was clutching his bleeding nose in one hand and waving one fist at Darren.  The Chinese boy skidded to a halt in the doorway, eyes positively bulging as his mind registered the presence of three Duos.  Nosebleed immediately forgotten, he did the only thing that he could think of to escape from the nightmare before him.  He fainted.

"Ooh," Deut chuckled.  "Good one."

"Do you think that Quatre and Trowa will respond as nicely?" Duo asked.

"Possibly, but I have other plans for them," Darren said easily.  "Well, assuming that certain people are willing to play along."  He looked meaningfully towards Heero and Deut, who snickered.

"I'm in," she said immediately.

"Well, that's good," Darren responded, openly checking out Heero.  "Because if you weren't, I most certainly was."

Heero just stared, growing decidedly worried as Deut took him by the hand and led him towards the living room.  He glanced over his shoulder to see Duo limping back to their room while Darren, still in his birthday suit, picked up the unconscious Wufei and followed them to the living room.  Despite himself, Heero grinned weakly.  He could see where this was going and the thought of Quatre blushing to his blond roots was rather amusing.  Several scenarios played out in his mind of what Trowa would do.  The thought of the quiet boy openly gaping at them was hilarious.

Deut saw that he was finally beginning to understand their plan as she pushed him unresisting to the couch.  She glanced over to see Darren carefully situating Wufei on the armchair in a rather compromising, and unclothed, position.  She noted wryly that Wufei didn't seem to be wearing any undergarments today.  _As if that would have saved him anyways_, she thought with a smirk.

"If he were awake, he'd have a heart attack," she commented wryly.

Darren shrugged.  "Yeah, 'if' indeed.  But his expression would be worth it."

"But then who would you torture?"

"Hmm… good question.  Quatre, I guess.  He blushes nicely.  Blondes are great."

Heero watched them banter playfully, wondering why he had agreed to this.  When Deut started towards him again, he suddenly remembered.  After seeing the curves on her, coupled with that incredible hair, how could he not comply?

"Heads up, guys!" Duo called out loudly from his room.  "Here they come!"

Deut smirked at Heero in an almost predatory way, reaching forward to yank off his tank top with practiced ease.  She flung the garment purposefully in the direction of the door and dropped her head to lock lips with Heero, who clumsily returned the kiss.  He could feel the lips again his own twitch and knew that Deut was laughing at him.  No wonder, either, since he was as red as Quatre would soon be and painfully inexperienced besides.  It didn't help him concentrate with Deut straddling him, making it a point to grope him as much as possible for the benefit of the returning pilots.

Unable to help himself, Heero looked over to where Darren and Wufei were positioned on the armchair.  He smiled into the continuing kiss.  The braided madman had positioned them together in such a way as to appear that they had fallen asleep after somewhat invigorating exercise.  Wufei was going to kill Darren later once he found out what the madman had done.  The thought of future raving fits about 'dishonorable curs' and 'injustice' were already ringing in his ears.

"We're back," Quatre called out.  "Duo, I got some bandages for your foot.  I noticed that you were limping…"

Quatre froze, eyes impossibly wide and growing wider, his face going from crimson to maroon.  Any redder and his face was in danger of setting his hair on fire.  He was staring directly at Wufei and Darren cuddling together on the armchair, oblivious to the activity on the couch.  Deut noticed this immediately and wriggled suggestively on Heero's stomach from where she was still straddling him, running her hands gently across his exposed chest.  In response, he moaned loudly.

The poor Arabian pilot shifted his attention to where Deut was busy sucking on Heero's ear while groping him for all she was worth.  Then the impossible happened.  Quatre got redder, the blush spreading down his neck and disappearing beneath his shirt.  He was so shocked and embarrassed that it took him several seconds for his mind to register exactly what he was seeing.

"Quatre?" Trowa called, having heard his friend go silent only seconds before.  "Are you okay?"

When he received no response, he wandered into the living room after the blond, Heero's discarded green tank top in his hand.  He was staring at it as he entered the room, looking slightly confused, which was a good deal of expression on the normally unreadable pilot.  He looked up just before bumping into Quatre and froze, eyes glued to the armchair.  A grin broke out on his face.

"Duo, Wufei is going to kill you when he wakes up."

Darren grinned at being addressed by the wrong name and responded by licking the Chinese pilot's ear, almost daring the unconscious pilot to awaken.  When Trowa just shook his head and turned to leave the room again, his gaze swept across the couch and the grope-a-thon in progress between Heero and… Duo?  His gaze shot back to the armchair where the braided boy was playing with Wufei's hair and then back to the couch where a spit-swapping, tonsil-probing kiss was taking place.  He opened and closed his mouth several times before deciding that it was probably best not to ask and turning to leave the room.  He walked face-first into the doorframe and collapsed.

"That must've hurt," Duo remarked, leaning against the wall on the other end of the room.  Quatre's gaze snapped up and locked on him, his crystalline blue eyes flickering over the bandaged ankle.  Seeing a third braided figure seemed to be too much for his shocked mind to take.  Following Trowa and Wufei's examples, he fainted.

"And another one bites the dust," Darren sang.

"Excellent timing," Deut said, winking at Duo.  "He almost made it."

Heero began to open his mouth when his tank top smacked into his face.  He blinked and pulled it on, looking curiously at Darren, who had thrown it.  He tried again now that there was no more clothing for him to be assaulted with.

"Why didn't you tell us you were triplets earlier?" he queried, his gaze trailing after Deut almost sadly.  Prank or not, he had rather enjoyed that.

Darren grinned widely and closed his eyes, holding up one finger.  "Sore wa himitsu desu!"

Heero blinked at him.

"Ignore him," Deut advised.  "It's safer that way."

"G's orders," Duo supplied.  "He thinks that it's dangerous for anyone to know about us.  You see, if one of us is captured, it would turn into a rather nasty hostage situation very quickly."

Heero nodded.  It made sense.

"Doesn't matter too much anymore, I guess," Deut sighed.  "Oz already knows about us after our last raid."

Duo looked at her strangely and made a note to himself to contact the others later and ask G on that account.  She had a point.  If Oz knew about them, what did it matter if the other pilots did?  Might even be advantageous to have that many more people that could assist them in their havoc.  Darren beat him to it and disappeared from the room.  Duo saw him disappear into the room that they had been sharing with Heero, his small communicator in hand and a smirk on his face.

_Oh, Lord, I know that look,_ Duo thought fearfully.  _What is that nutcase planning this time?_  Externally, he just set about helping Deut and Heero rouse the other pilots, careful to dress Wufei before the irate Chinese pilot awoke.  He cringed to think of what would happen if the raven-haired boy were to wake up naked.  He enjoyed torturing Wufei as well as the next Maxwell, but unlike Donovan, he wasn't a masochist.  Darren might do it anyways just because he was off his rocker, but the rest of them flat out knew better than to pull something that insane.

_Speaking of insane,_ he thought, _where did Darren get off to?  It doesn't take that long to make a phone call._

As if to answer his silent question, Darren came back into the room, grinning way too widely.  Seeing Duo's spooked look, he just winked and helped him pull the still unconscious Chinese boy into the kitchen where Deut and Heero had managed to drag Quatre and Trowa.  Seeing Duo struggling to help carry Wufei and walk at the same time, Darren began supporting the unconscious boy's full weight plus part of Duo's.  Once in the kitchen, Darren deposited his limp cargo in one of the chairs and took another for himself.  Heero was still looking at him curiously and he grinned unabashedly.  Darren was seriously considering rearranging Wufei's hands so that he would have a coronary when he awoke.  He only decided against it for the pure necessity of explaining things to the entire group so that they only had to say it once.  Deut began wandering around the group, handing Duo and Darren a cup of water each and keeping a third for herself.

Duo shrugged and upturned his glass on Quatre, who sputtered indignantly and nearly fell out of his chair.  Deut slowly dribbled water across Trowa's face, watching as his face screwed up slightly in irritation before he completely came to.  Darren wasn't nearly so nice, opting to fling his glass directly at Wufei's crotch.  He belatedly remembered that the Chinese pilot was wearing white pants.  After staring for a moment at the other boy as he came awake in a state of shock, he remembered that Wufei wasn't wearing any underwear.

Wufei registered that fact at the same moment that Darren did and flattened his stomach to the table to hide his now translucent pants.  Throwing him a lecherous look, Darren ducked under the table to openly stare.  Wufei squawked in protest and pulled him up by his braid, blushing madly and trying to ignore the snickers from the other two Maxwells and surprisingly Trowa.  He scowled.  It was always the quiet ones.

Quatre ignored their antics and rounded on Heero and Duo, his fair skin still glowing with an insistent blush.

"Just what is going on here?" he asked, his normally polite tone strained from his embarrassment and confusion.

"Well, it would appear that another round of embarrassing Wufei has begun," Duo offered, grinning at Darren, who was currently struggling in a headlock from a very incensed Chinese pilot.  Darren quickly escaped by playfully nipping Wufei's side, earning himself both his freedom and almost a fist across his jaw.  Luckily for him, he was able to dodge and hide behind Deut fairly successfully.

"They're triplets," Heero explained when no further information was forthcoming from the still smirking Americans.  The Maxwells just winked, grinning widely at the stunned pilots.  Quatre just stared.  Trowa smirked.

"There's a little more to it than that," Deut said distractedly.  She was attempting to keep Wufei from trampling her in his attempt to slaughter Darren.

"And what is that?" Quatre asked weakly.

Suddenly, Darren grinned and Duo tried to hide behind Heero, who was openly watching the chaos in a state of mild shock.  Darren slipped around Deut and snagged Wufei's wrist, pushing the Chinese boy's hand directly into Deut's chest.  Wufei froze, a strange look crossing his features.  For several moments, he remained perfectly still, Quatre and Trowa watching him in confusion while Heero and Duo smirked.  Darren stared at the raven-haired pilot expectedly.  Waiting.  Suddenly, Wufei moved, his hand squeezing gently once to confirm what his senses had originally told him.  Blood seeped from each nostril and he collapsed for a second time.  Deut sniffed.

"Darren, you are such a pervert," she said, managing to sound somewhat affronted even though she was grinning.

"What…" Quatre started, trailing off.  He wasn't sure he wanted to know.  He was certain he didn't want to know when Darren grinned wider.

"Deut is a girl," Heero said quickly, sparing them the shock of finding out how he and Wufei had.  Darren shot him a betrayed look and Duo settled for smirking at the expressions on Quatre and Trowa's faces.  Deut looked somewhat relieved, making Heero glad he had spoken.

Quatre's gaze flickered towards Darren and then to Duo.  "What about you two?"

"Duo's an idiot and Darren's a pervert," Deut supplied.  "But they are both guys, though in Darren's case, just barely."

"Hey!"

"Darren isn't just a pervert, he's a nymphomaniac," Duo elaborated.

"You wanna make something of it?  I won't mind if you say yes, you know," Darren said, winking at his brother.  Duo, as always, ignored him and he returned his attentions to leering at Wufei, who had yet to regain consciousness.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Trowa asked.  He raised his visible eyebrow when he was ignored by the Maxwells, who were more interested in torturing each other or the unconscious pilot.

"Keeps them out of danger if one of them is captured," Heero supplied.  Inside, he was wondering how Deut had managed to somehow get both Duo and Darren into sturdy headlocks.  It was their fault, he reflected, for attacking her for her earlier comments.

"No hostage situations," Duo croaked, still prying at the arm around his throat.  He snaked one hand behind Deut and prodded Darren, who hooked his arm around the proffered one.  As one, they stood up, causing Deut to fall into their arms with an outraged squawk.

In retaliation, Deut twisted expertly and flipped backwards gracefully to land on her feet.  The movement threw her brothers forcibly to the floor.  She grinned and hopped just out of reach when Darren lunged for her.  Duo just shook his head and reclaimed his seat at the table, having obviously learned his lesson.  Giggling, she ran out of the room, Darren hot on her heels.

"Hey guys, can you take care of Wufei while I keep those two from killing each other?" Duo asked.  He recognized their retreat for what it was.  Darren had obviously found out something or he wouldn't have bothered chasing Deut from the room.  There was no way he could have caught her and they all knew it.  He barely waited for the nods before disappearing after the retreating laughter.  Arriving in the room that they each occasionally shared with Heero, Duo closed the door behind him and waited for Darren to begin.

"Well, here's how it goes," Darren said immediately, keeping his voice just low enough that it would be all but impossible for someone to listen in on their conversation from outside the room.  "Donovan contacted G immediately when we were found out.  G told him that if Oz knows, then we might as well let the others know.  No harm in having them look out for us, you know."

"Now we just have to break it to them," Deut murmured.

"Oh, but we could have fun with that," Duo smirked.

"Not yet," Darren said immediately.  The other two just gaped at them.  "No, not yet, I say.  I want to have a bit of fun with them.  Donovan and Dustin agreed.  Right now, they're the only ones over there that know about this, and the three of us want to see just how batty we can drive them before they start to figure it out on their own."

"Ooh, sounds like fun," Deut agreed.

"What's the plan then?" Duo asked, grinning.  Trust Dustin to agree to this.

"Well, I do owe David a little something for nearly getting me killed.  He should have told me about the security systems and what he did to Heero, you know.  So here's what we do…"

To Be Continued…

I know, I know.  I'm taking forever.  Forgive the overburdened college student.  However… I may be inspired to go faster if I get commentary.  *evil smirk*


	5. Chapter 5

By the time the three returned to the kitchen, all of the pilots were conscious and waiting on them expectantly.  Heero studied them suspiciously, certain that there was a simple way to tell them apart.  Quatre simply threw a few baffled looks in their direction before shrugging and turning his usual happy-go-lucky smile on them.  Trowa was still obviously amused from their earlier antics.  Wufei looked visibly upset, not that anyone could blame him.  He looked even more worried when three sets of amethyst eyes sparkled with malicious amusement.

"Say guys, could we talk about this in the morning?  It's getting a bit late," Duo offered.  Quatre started to respond before the obvious dawned on him.

"Where are you going to sleep?" he asked sheepishly.  "There aren't enough rooms or beds…"

"No biggie," Deut responded idly.  "Duo can stay with Heero.  I don't think he'd mind.  They're used to sharing a bed."  At this, Darren leered suggestively at Heero, who blushed darkly, sending Trowa into another round of sniggering.  "Darren can sleep with Wufei.  And Wufei, you don't have to worry.  Darren isn't gay, for all of his joking.  As the only girl here, I'll stay on the couch."

Wufei nodded slowly, uncertainly.  He knew that the Maxwells didn't lie and Deut had just flat out stated that Darren wasn't gay.  All of the Maxwells were strange, so no matter what, he was going to be ripping his hair out.  At the very least, it was a relief to know that the nymphomaniac, as Deut had so kindly pointed out in an earlier description, wouldn't be groping him in the night.

"You can finish questioning us in the morning," Duo added when Heero opened his mouth to protest to something.  "The others just got back from a mission, so they're tired.  I'd rather not have to answer everything on my lonesome."

Heero's jaw clicked shut and he nodded stiffly.  With a grunt that sounded suspiciously disappointed to Deut, he started towards his room.  Duo followed him silently, limping slightly.  Darren made kissing noises after them, causing Heero to stiffen and mutter something under his breath.  Wufei simply huffed indignantly and headed stiffly towards his room, trying to ignore Darren's mouth-produced noises as they disappeared down the hall.  Giggling softly at the slurping sounds coming from the direction they had disappeared, Deut headed for the couch.

"Um, are you sure you'll be comfortable there?" Quatre asked.  Deut glanced back at him, amused to see him wringing his hands worriedly.  As expected, the sensitive blond was upset that a girl was sleeping in a less comfortable location than himself.

"Of course, Q-chan!  I'm not one of the pilots of Deathscythe for nothing."  Seeing him still looking visibly upset, she grinned shamelessly at him.  "Unless, of course, you'd rather share the couch with Trowa?"

Quatre blushed to his roots and looked anywhere but at Trowa, who was unsuccessfully trying to hide his own crimson cheeks behind his bangs.  Deut knew perfectly well that both of them were as straight as they came, despite their behavior towards each other.  They were best friends, but nothing more.  Despite knowing this fact, Deut had no compunctions about teasing them relentlessly.  It took several moments before either of them found their voices again.

"Um… I could take the floor and Trowa could be on the couch," he tried again, unwilling to give up.

Deut sighed.  Seeing that this was almost certainly a losing battle, she decided to act on her own stubbornness and plunked down on the sofa, wriggling happily into the cushions and staring at them defiantly.

"You want the couch?  Come and get it."

Quatre opened his mouth to protest again when a shirt smacked into his face.  He crimsoned again and quickly averted his gaze, tossing the shirt back clumsily.  A pair of pants immediately hit Trowa in the head.  The two pilots exchanged mortified expressions and scrambled from the room.  Quatre was brave enough to back into the room a few minutes later with a stack of pillows and blankets in hand.  He silently set them down beside the sofa and, keeping his eyes averted, beat a hasty retreat from the room, every inch of his fair skin a brilliant cherry red from the intensity of the poor boy's blush.

Deut watched him leave with an amused expression.  That would be the last she saw of him for the rest of the night.  Sighing, she collected the blankets and pillows to create a small fortress of warmth on the couch.  Tomorrow, there would be problems and she knew it.  In two hours, she and Duo were going to swap positions so that she could grope the pilot of Wing Zero.  If things went well, he'd never know that the person prodding him wasn't Duo.  Wufei would be out for blood as well.  She had told him that Darren wasn't gay, which was perfectly true.  However, the nymphomaniac happened to be bi, a detail that Wufei most certainly wouldn't appreciate.

She grinned and glanced at her watch.  She didn't want to be late in swapping out with Duo.  Heero was going to go into convulsions when she was done with him.  Tomorrow, with the help of Donovan's tampering, the three of them would be out on 'missions' of some sort.  Dustin and Donovan would mysteriously be busy as well, leaving the others, innocently unsuspecting, to catch the chaos that resulted from their actions.  Fighting a snort of amusement, she checked her watch again.

*     *     *

Later in the night, two startled squalls rang through the safehouse.  Three madly howling black-clad figures escaped into the night, none of them able to stop laughing long enough to ease the pain in their oxygen-starved lungs.  After running a few miles, Deut and Darren mostly carrying Duo, they pulled to a stop, laughing uproariously now that they were safe.  In a few minutes, three of their unsuspecting brothers would arrive to take their places.

"I wonder who got talked into wearing the padding," Deut gasped.  That created another bout of laughter.  Now that the other pilots knew that one of them was a girl, someone would have to keep up that illusion.

"Demitri," Duo snickered.  "It has to be him.  He's the only one passive enough to be forced into it."

"What if it was Derrick?" Darren asked.  The other two started laughing again, getting louder as they saw the interested expression on Darren's face.

"Actually," a new voice interrupted.  "It won't be either of them."

The three snickering Maxwells looked up to see Dustin hovering over them with an amused expression on his face.  He was a bit late in meeting them, but not seriously so.  Still grinning, he reached down to help Duo to his feet.  A moment later, he pushed Darren onto his butt as his other brother tried to rise.  Deut winked at Dustin and waited for a highly irritated Darren to try to rise again before she grabbed the back of his shirt and landed him in the dirt for a second time.

"Hey!  What do I look like?  An inflatable punching dummy?" Darren whined, finally managing to move away from them and get to his feet.

"An inflatable something," Dustin smirked.

"Hey!"

"So who is it?" Duo asked.

"Huh?" Dustin responded intelligently.

"Who has to dress in drag?"

At that, an unholy gleam appeared in Dustin's eyes, giving him a decidedly psychotic look.  The others waited tensely, paying rapt attention.  They knew that look a little too well.  The last time they had seen that expression, David had been found mummified in duct tape.  How he had managed it was still a mystery since David was much stronger than any of them, save Daniel, who was about an even match.  Even Dante, who could easily beat Heero to the ground if he wanted to, couldn't have pulled that off on his own.  Dustin, however, had managed it somehow.

"Well…" he drawled, enjoying watching them squirm.  "Since I had Donovan conveniently send both Demitri and Derrick out along with the two of us and there's no way in hell that anyone could force David or Daniel into drag…"

"DANTE?!?" Deut sputtered.  Tears ran down her cheeks.  "He's gonna kill us!"

"Correction," Duo smirked.  "He's going to kill the first person to try to grope his padding."

"Poor Heero," Darren wheezed.

"Poor Daniel and David," Deut countered.  "Heero and Wufei are out for blood!"

"You know, I'm almost tempted to go back and watch," Duo muttered wistfully.

"You should have heard the language Dante was using."

"I'm not sure I want to know," Deut muttered.

"I didn't know that such words and phrases existed."

"I want to know," Darren said quickly.

"Let me see if I can remember this right… I believe I was called 'an unnatural spawn of the diseased backside of a castrated toad' for starters.  And that was just his opening statement."  Snickers followed his pronouncement.

"Anything else?"

"Something about a 'moldy bucket of decaying, maggot-infested yak testes' was the next one."

"You know you need a tape recorder, right?" Duo gasped.

"I never knew that he was that creative," Deut said, sounding awed.

"Blah," Darren muttered disinterestedly.  "I can do better than that."

"I know," Dustin groaned.  "Why do you think we make an effort not to piss you off anymore?  Our ears can't take it."

"Neither can our poor little minds," Duo sniffled, adopting as innocent an expression as he was able.

"You're as corrupt as I am," Darren protested.

"Let's ask Wufei that," Deut smirked.

"Or Heero," Darren retorted, grinning.

"Speaking of which, how long do you think we'll have to hide from our three victims?" Duo asked.

"How long do we want to live?" Deut countered.

Darren got an unholy look in his eyes that caused the other three to shift uncomfortably.  They knew that look.  He was planning something that would most likely traumatize everyone involved.

"I say we give them a few days, then sneak in and get everyone riled up again."

The suggestion set off another round of laughter as the braided figures disappeared into the night.

*     *     *

Dante sat rigidly at the table as Quatre cheerily served him breakfast.  The entire time, the blond proceeded to ask him how he slept, if he was comfortable on the couch and if he was sure he wouldn't like the bed tonight.  Fighting a twitch in his cheek, he tried to respond politely to the inane chatter.  His mind, however, was elsewhere, namely on the thick padding that he had been forced to strap to his chest.  He barely remembered to keep his voice high enough to pass for Deut.  While his voice wasn't nearly as low as David's or Daniel's, it was deep enough to draw attention to who he really was.  Unfortunately for him, he was doing a very good job of hiding his identity.  As it was, Trowa was openly looking at him from across the table with a distinctly admiring expression.  If he kept it up, Dante was going to hurt him.  Badly.

Feeling horribly conspicuous, he almost didn't notice when Wufei stomped into the tiny kitchen.  Dante's gaze locked onto the Chinese boy after the first halfhearted glance.  Half of his face was discolored with a bluish black bruise that stretched the entire length of his right jaw.  Huffing in response to Quatre's shocked exclamation and immediate pampering, he turned to glare at Dante.

"You told me he was straight," he snapped.  Dante blinked.  Before he could think of an intelligent answer, Heero stormed into the kitchen sporting a black eye.

"You told me the same about Duo," Heero grated out, looking ready to kill.  Dante blinked, realization settling in.  He bit back a smirk.

"Duo IS straight," he answered easily.  Despite himself, a grin slowly worked its way onto his face.  "And as for Darren, were those my exact words?"

"You told me 'Darren isn't gay,' Maxwell!" Wufei roared.  As soon as he said it, he paused, reflective.  His suspicions were confirmed when Dante smirked.

"Darren is bi," Dante snickered.  Nearly cross-eyed in his rage, Wufei drew back one hand to punch his lights out.  Dante frowned at him and batted his eyes, feeling the Maxwell sense of humor taking over.  "You would hit a girl, Fei-chan?"

Wufei sputtered and backed off, crossing his arms angrily.  If he hit Deut, Heero would beat him into the ground and he knew it.  Too bad for the Chinese pilot that he didn't know who he was looking at.  Heero scowled at Wufei once before plunking down at the table.

"But Duo," he began.

"Is straight," a new, slightly nasal, voice said.

Dante looked up and bit back a grin.  Standing in the doorway to the small kitchen was David, who was glaring daggers at Wufei.  His nose was swollen and looked as though it had been bleeding recently.  Dante had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing aloud.  Apparently Wufei had given as good as he had gotten.  He wondered how Daniel had fared against Heero.  He was answered almost immediately when Daniel peered into the room just long enough to scowl at Heero.  In almost a mirror image of Heero, Daniel was sporting a black eye.  Dante couldn't help himself.  He snickered.

"But," Heero started again, not to be put off.  This time, Daniel interrupted him.

"I'm straight, Heero.  I didn't touch you," he snapped.  He glared at Dante, who was still laughing softly.  "But I'm willing to bet that Deut did."

Heero snapped rigid in his seat, his head swiveling to stare at Dante, who had frozen in place.  His eyes promised death to Daniel for saying that.  There was no telling how long they were going to be stuck in this tiny safehouse and the last thing he needed was for Heero to be chasing him around, grabbing at the padding.  Unwilling to be targeted, he did the only thing that made sense, even knowing that it would get his butt slammed later.  If he couldn't lie, he could certainly find a mile of wriggle room in telling the other pilots the truth.  Since the others didn't lie either, he only had to corner one of them into silence.  And since Daniel had already stated that he wasn't to blame, there was only one avenue of escape left to him.

"I didn't touch you either," Dante said tersely.  Which was true.  He hadn't, but Deut had.  "And Duo is straight, like he said, so there's no way he would have either.  That only leaves one person."

"Darren," Heero growled.

If looks could have killed, Dante would have expired immediately under David's vengeful scowl.  The scowl was moved almost immediately towards Heero and Wufei, both of whom had risen to settle the score.  David took a step back, unable to defend himself by denying doing anything.  The other pilots only knew about three of them and he couldn't say anything without letting on that their knowledge of the Maxwell numbers was still off.

David took another step back before abandoning all dignity and bolting for the door, Wufei and Heero right behind him.  Dante watched him go with a relieved look.  At the moment, he was safe from groping hands.  Later, he was a dead man, but for the moment he could relax.  Daniel watched the three go with a smug expression.  He never had any compunctions about getting David in all sorts of trouble.  This wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last, time that they had managed to get the pilots to hurt the other in some fashion.

Dante, despite his own precarious position in the whole affair, couldn't help himself.  He snickered.

To Be Continued…

Ooh… I posted another section.  I have a bit more than this written, but I'm not at a good point to post it.  Things get really neat soon, I promise.  Oh, and the faster the commentary comes, the faster I go.  Must feed the ego, you know.  ^_^


	6. Chapter 6

Four days had passed.  Daniel was still laughing himself sick over the plight of his two brothers.  Though he personally was safe in his role as Duo, Dante and David were not so lucky.

David, after receiving a massive beating from both Heero and Wufei, had begun glaring daggers at his brothers.  They knew perfectly well that when the time came, they would both be dead.  But for the moment, David was too busy defending himself from two furious pilots who believed that Darren had molested them.  Even though Wufei was correct in that assumption, he still had the wrong Maxwell.

No matter how badly David was being beaten, Dante still was convinced that he had the worst problem of the three.  Even taking into consideration that David was being beaten to within an inch of his life every day and that Daniel, who was normally very quiet, had to chatter endlessly, he was still convinced that he had caught the worst of the deal.  Dressed and padded as Deut, he had to endure admiring glances from all of the other pilots, particularly Heero and Trowa.  Quatre was too polite to openly stare or flirt and Wufei would rather castrate himself before approaching a girl, thus saving him from open advances from at least two of them.  Trowa, however, seemed content to stare incessantly.  Heero was worse.  Thinking that Deut might be interested in him, he hounded Dante endlessly.  The stares, he could ignore, but if Heero 'accidentally' touched him one more time, he would pay in blood.  There were drawbacks to being the only supposed female in a house full of males.  He decided that in the future, he would take special care to watch how Deut was treated by the others, just on principle.

Dante shifted on the sofa of their newest safehouse, which was surprisingly one of Quatre's mansions, silently praying that someone would finish their mission soon and relieve him.  He squirmed again, distinctly not liking the way that Trowa was staring at him from across the room from beneath his bangs.  He was only seconds away from storming across the enormous room and throttling the brunette when he heard his communicator beep.  Suspicious, he snapped it open and held it to his ear.

"Yes?" he asked testily.

"Yo, Dante!" Donovan greeted cheerily.  Much too cheerily for Dante's tastes, who was in something of a murderous mood.  "What's up?"

"Trowa, for one," he muttered.  Donovan almost choked on his tongue with the force of his laughter.

"And Heero?" Donovan couldn't help but ask.

"Probably already made a mess," Dante snapped.  "What do you want?"

"Well, we're finally free and we thought that the three of you should meet us a mile behind Quatre's mansion.  We have news from G."

"And what is that?"

"We'll tell you guys when you're out here."

Dante scowled at the communicator in his hand.  While still years ahead of any phone or satellite relay, it still didn't have the capacity to carry images across to the other speaker, a feature that he would have loved at that particular moment.  Donovan was never that happy unless he was planning something that would result in many, many gray hairs on his victims.  He severely wanted to be able to glare at the mad scientist, just knowing that something was brewing.

"Fine," he snarled, closing the connection.

Ignoring the curious look from Trowa, he walked stiffly out of the room to collect Daniel and David.  He knew without checking that the two were busy shredding each other somewhere where they wouldn't be disturbed.  It was easy to find the two surly teens, knowing that when they wanted to hide that they'd simply be in the last place anyone expected to find them.  Knowing that the other pilots thought of them as complete idiots, he immediately started toward the massive library in the north wing of Quatre's mansion.  He had to search all three floors before he found them in the far corner, pounding on each other with encyclopedias.  Had it been anyone other than the two of them being pelted with such monstrous books, Dante would have been certain that countless bones would have been shattered by now.  As it was, he was convinced that both of them would be sporting livid bruises.

Dante cleared his throat loudly.  The two combatants on the floor paused to glare at him, temporarily releasing each other from the death grips they had on each other's throats.  Daniel pulled back a little bit to relocate his shoulder, still glaring furiously at David.  Despite the ongoing war, they listened to Dante's announcement.

"Donovan said he wants to speak with us behind this monstrosity of a house."

David snorted.  Just like the clothes Quatre constantly wore, his mansion was a soft, powdery pink.  Despite being an eyesore, it was actually safe.  No self-respecting Oz officer would ever demean themselves far enough to investigate such an atrocious waste of a mansion.  That safety, however, didn't prevent numerous jokes and lewd comments from appearing within the Maxwell ranks.

Still glaring daggers at each other, David and Daniel called a temporary truce in their quests for blood.  They would hear what Donovan wanted and then they would proceed to kill each other.  Shooting murderous glances at each other every few minutes, they followed Dante out of the house.

*     *     *

Donovan scowled darkly at the small communicator in his hand, barely resisting the urge to break it.  He had to wait.  The three traumatized Maxwells were coming and he couldn't tell them yet that they no longer had to hide their numbers.  Well, he could, but not if he wanted to pull his next joke on the other pilots.

Darren had just called to inform him of G's new orders.  The other four pilots were to be sent to the Oz base in Spain to sabotage the new mobile suits they were working on.  Both prototypes and system blueprints had to be destroyed.  G had ordered all ten of them to follow the other pilots and make sure they succeeded.  Which meant that if they still wanted to pull their prank on the others, they had to somehow hide their numbers at the Oz base while still protecting their friends.  They didn't want the pilots to discover them on base.  Shock could put them in danger, but even so, they still wanted to play a joke on their friends.  They'd just have to make sure that they weren't seen.  But with so many of them in one place, that was going to be a difficult task.  He swore loudly.

"What is it?" David snarled, snapping him out of his daze.

"Eh?  Oh, um, we've been ordered to go to Spain," he stuttered.

Dante glanced at David and Daniel, both of which were eying Donovan suspiciously.  To catch him off guard was difficult enough, but to actually make the insane scientist stammer was an impossibility.  He saw their guarded looks and shrugged.

"Sorry.  I was thinking about something else.  Now, basically, we're just backup while the others go in, run their raid and get out.  I think that some of us should stay with them and the rest of us can scatter and make sure no one bothers them while they work."

"What's so important about Spain?" Dante asked.

"They're working on a new type of mobile suit.  Since G doesn't want something like that running around, we have to destroy it."

"Destroy?" Daniel asked, perking up.

"Big robot go boom," Donovan confirmed.

"When do we leave?" David asked, sounding eager.  He, understandably, wanted far away from the other pilots before they turned him into mincemeat.  Dante just looked happy to be able to get rid of the padding, which he was already in the process of shucking.

"Tomorrow, the other pilots will leave.  Two of us will go with them."

"Two?" David asked.

"Yes, two.  Deut and Dustin will accompany then.  Duo's still limping, so he's no good.  Darren, for obvious reasons, cannot go.  Neither can anyone they assume to be Darren.  The last thing we need during this mission is Maxwell pieces strewn across the Oz base.  As amusing as Wufei would find it, we just can't have that."

 The last statement brought another round of smirks from every braided figure present.  In the true Maxwell spirit, David, Daniel and Dante had continued to give the Chinese pilot constant, eye-twitching, ulcer-forming, run-for-your-life-before-it's-too-late-because-here-he-comes-now, grief.

"Besides," Donovan continued.  "This way, if they happen to stumble across one of us while running around base, they'll assume that it's just Darren and they won't question it.  If three of us are with them and they find one of us… well, that'd be interesting at the very least."

"This means that the rest of us have to remain solo while running around base," Dante muttered.

"Good point.  Perhaps we can change things and separate from the pilots from the beginning.  Or just have one of us with them so the rest of can pair up."

"Even if only one of us follows them and the rest of us stay in pairs in case they find us, that still leaves one of us running solo," David protested.

"When have we ever needed to stay in pairs?" Daniel snapped.  "This will work fine.  I say that we all run solo just to cause Oz as much grief as possible.  Only one of us actually has to stay with them.  If we need help, when have we ever had to worry about finding each other?"

"It takes time to congregate in a new base!"

"We'll have the layout of the base before we get there!"

Dante and Donovan remained silent as the perpetual war between the two bodybuilders flared up yet again.  They exchanged exasperated glances and proceeded to ignore their brothers.

"I think the solo idea is a good one," Donovan said.  "They'll never be able to run into enough of us at any one time to suspect anything."

"Who should we send with them?"

"I still say Dustin."

"I think Derrick would do better," Dante argued.

"Possibly.  Having a pyromaniac with you is always a good thing.  He's not as fast or as strong as most of us…"

"He's faster than you," Dante reminded him, smirking.

"Yeah, but I'm stronger than him, so stuff it.  And if you want someone fast to go with them, you should have suggested Deut or Dustin."

"I'd actually have said Duo, but he's still limping and the last thing we need is him slowing them down."

"He's going to have to stay with somebody," Donovan sighed.  "We can't allow him to be captured because Zechs actually managed to land a good blow the last time we went to Oz to play."

"Let Dustin stay with him.  They're both equally nuts, so they work very well together in causing chaos.  Besides, I still think that Derrick should be the one."

"Derrick it is," Donovan conceded.  "We'll have to make sure that he doesn't blow up on them, though.  The last thing we need is a Gundam pilot a flambé."

"He'll behave if he knows what's good for him.  If I have to, I'll sick Darren on him," Dante huffed.

"That's no punishment," Donovan protested.  He stepped aside as David and Daniel rolled past him, fists and feet flying as they did their best to dismember each other.  "He'd like that."

Dante snorted at the casual statement and idly stepped out of the path of destruction as David and Daniel made another pass.  Both of them were dusty and sporting numerous bruises.  Dante stuck out one foot and tripped Daniel as he passed.  Donovan grabbed David's braid and pulled him onto his butt.  Both grounded Maxwells glared at him murderously.

"You guys need to go pack whatever you need and prepare to wreak havoc," Donovan said firmly, proceeding to recap their decisions for the two who had been too busy fighting to hear the plans.  "Deut, Dustin and Demitri are already headed back to the mansion.  We'll swap out tomorrow during our flight to Spain so that Derrick can stay with them at the Oz base.  Everyone else is going solo."

"Done," David and Daniel snapped simultaneously.  They paused to glare at each other before getting somewhat stiffly to their feet.  Donovan quickly relayed the orders to everyone else as the four black-clad figures vanished into the night.

To Be Continued…

Oops.  Did that again.  My bad.  *snickers and ducks thrown items*  Sorry about that, but I'm in the middle of messing with finals.  ^_^;  I'll keep working on it though.  Comments and suggestions loved, craved and desperately needed to feed my starving ego.


	7. Chapter 7

Treize stepped out of his personal jet in a huff.  Despite knowing that he should have seen it coming, he was still furious with the state he had found his private mountain cabin in, courtesy of a cluster of braided idiots.  What was even worse, they had managed to get him the mother of all tickets, a towing charge, and an impound fee.  To top it off, his poor Ferrari absolutely reeked.  He had to pay colossal fees to have the car scrubbed down to get rid of the smell.  He was honestly afraid to ask what had been found on the front seat that had merited a change in upholstery.

Trying to hide his irritation, he walked away from the plane towards the private limo that would take him to the base in Madrid where Zechs was waiting for him.  The new prototype mobile suit was ready to be tested and the blond had specifically requested that he be there for the first flight.

In all honesty, he did not want to be anywhere near the base.  With the knowledge that important information and a one-of-a-kind prototype were being held here, he feared for his safety and sanity.  He had no doubt that the Maxwells would be paying the base a visit.  He just didn't know when they would do it or how badly the base would be traumatized by their antics.  Treize paled as a new thought struck him.  If they came here, it wouldn't be for their jollies like on the other base.  This time, they would mean business.

Steeling his nerves, he calmly climbed out of his limo when the car came to a stop.  Zechs was already waiting for him, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot and throwing nervous glances around.  He looked as though he expected a herd of Maxwells to run him down like a stampede of rabid lemmings.  Seeing Treize, he scurried over, fishing a sheet of paper out of his pocket as he all but sprinted towards the general.

"What is it?" Treize asked the moment he was within hearing distance.  Zechs looked like he was about to explode.

"A choir arrived at the international airport this morning," he stammered.  "The names listed, in order of boarding, were Shin Hiruma, Ian Newman, Ivan Gray, Alex Mueller, Ignatius Shaw, Brian Richmond, Oberon Taigas, Hayden Everett, and Rusty Stevens."

"And?" Treize asked slowly.  The names sounded strange, especially with the rarity of a couple of them, but he couldn't see what had Zechs so upset.

"The initials spell out 'Shinigami's brothers.'  They're already here and they're taunting us."

Treize felt his tongue turn to ash.  He swallowed twice.

"Who all have you alerted about this?" he asked.

"The entire base knows that they're in the area.  We've moved all of the blueprints to a new location, which I won't say aloud since I don't trust them not to have already bugged the base.  Unfortunately, we can't so easily hide the prototype, so I've moved most of security to protect it."

Treize nodded stiffly.  "Send orders to everyone on base that they're to attempt to capture one of the Maxwell boys.  If we have one of them in our custody, perhaps we can keep the others under control."

"Yes sir," Zechs said quickly.  He turned and walked quickly back towards the way he had come from, already barking out orders.

Drawing a deep breath, Treize forced himself to keep his lunch down.  There were nine of them on the plane that had given themselves away and no way to know exactly how many more that had hidden their names.  He was certain that a tenth Maxwell had to be bringing in Deathscythe Hell.  The number ten rang in his mind and he frowned.  Ten Ares had been stolen from the last Oz base that they had raided and now it looked as though there were ten people arriving in Spain.  He let out the breath he had been unconsciously holding.  At least he knew how many of them there were, now.  Before, he had only been able to guess.  He honestly didn't believe that there could be more than a few dozen of them, no matter what information they had found hacking into the L2 databanks.

Treize's eyes moved to rest on the large hanger where the prototype was being stored and he frowned.  Ten Maxwells were more than enough to do just about anything they wanted.  Silently, he began to pray as he walked indoors.

*     *     *

Heero glanced to his side, frowning slightly.  Naturally, one Maxwell had to fly Deathscythe Hell in case it was needed, but of the two remaining, only one was still with them.  When asked which Maxwell he was, the American had almost died laughing, only pausing long enough to ask if they needed to get nametags.  He had finally admitted that both Darren and Deut had taken a plane to get to Spain.

Derrick, noticing the frown being directed at him yet again, only grinned, wriggled his eyebrows and wondered silently how anyone could be so dense.  He had never actually said his name when Heero had asked, but the Japanese pilot had automatically assumed that he was Duo since he had told him Darren and Deut were on the flight into Madrid.  He had neglected, however, to say that he had been on that flight as well under the name Shin Hiruma.

Currently, the two of them were casually watching security move around from their safe vantage point of the shadows.  They had been thwarted in moving so far from the tight formation of the guards.  Unable to sneak in immediately, they waited patiently for a distraction.  The other three pilots hadn't yet arrived at the base, busy hiding their Gundams in strategic locations so they could get to them to escape.  This had proved more challenging with the intensive security, so they were over an hour late.  Knowing this, Heero was counting on Deut or Darren to do something.  Derrick knew that the distraction would only come when Dante managed to sneak inside.

Derrick cursed silently, shifting uncomfortably when he noticed that one leg had fallen asleep.  Even though he was both weaker and slower than most of his siblings, he was also one of the most dangerous when he wanted to be.  Darren hadn't started calling him a pyromaniac for nothing.  Raging fires and deafening explosions followed in his wake.  Had he been the first to enter the base this time, half of it could have already been destroyed and the other half in flames had he desired.  And had they made him angry in the process, he could have turned the entire area into a pile of ashes in the matter of a few minutes.  Unfortunately, those were not his orders.  Normally, he wouldn't have been so anxious to get in, blow something up and get out, but tonight was different.  Something was wrong, but he didn't know what it was and it made him nervous.

He hunkered down further into the shadows and silently thanked the others for not sending Demitri into the base first.  While physically the absolute weakest and slowest of the group by mass lengths, he was by far the most dangerous when he was angry.  He had been trained differently than the others under a more intensive program.  Like all of the Maxwells, he was a berserker, but unlike the others, no one ever survived his rampages.  Had he been sent in alone, he could have destroyed the base and everyone inside within a few minutes of getting angry.  Luckily, he was almost impossible to force into a berserker rage, even when his life was in danger.

Derrick glanced at the passing soldiers again, a frown appearing on his face.  What was taking the others so long?  They had been in there long enough for Dante to have done some serious damage.  He was about to ignore his own safety and enter to check on his brothers when the diversion finally appeared.

The distraction came so suddenly that Heero actually jumped slightly before noticing that Derrick was already running full tilt towards the base, almost invisible in his black outfit.  The fact that all of the power on the base had suddenly gone out, taking with it the floodlights, had helped greatly.  Cursing, he sprinted after the American and slipped into one of the emergency exits just behind him.  Heero glanced around, wondering how long the lights were going to remain out.  Someone had blown a circuit somewhere, but the problem would be located and fixed almost immediately.

The hiss of a silencer from a very large gun barely reached Heero's ears before Derrick darted forward down the hallway.  Heero glanced disinterestedly at the body he passed.  Within a few seconds, he caught up with Derrick and the two began sprinting in earnest to get to the innermost areas of the base before anyone could stop them.  They knew that Zechs had moved the hardcopy of the blueprints, and fortunately for the blond, they didn't know where the sheets were hidden.

A shadow flashed in front of them, flipping itself into the relative safety of a nearby doorframe.  A gun flashed towards them.  Both Heero and Derrick reciprocated, the former opening fire immediately.  Derrick threw his arm out to the side, pushing Heero off of his feet and fouling his aim.  He immediately rolled to his feet, carefully holding his shot this time.  The shadow emerged from the door, sheathing his gun.

"What are you doing here?" Dante hissed.  "You're supposed to be in the south wing."  He glanced at Heero for a moment before proceeding to ignore the Japanese man.

"The south wing was guarded too heavily.  We had to enter from the north.  Besides, you're supposed to be hacking the mainframe," Derrick retorted hotly.  "Why the hell are you wandering the halls?"

"The mainframe had an accident," Dante chuckled, grinning bemusedly and fingering his gun.  Derrick snorted.

"My ass it did," he growled, shaking his head.

"There were a lot of problems other than the mainframe, by the way," he added.

Derrick spat on the ground and scowled.  Other problems entailed all of his siblings running freely across base, the plan forgotten.  Something had gone wrong, probably due to the unexpected security.  They had had to abandon formation.

"Fine.  Whatever," he muttered.  "Have fun wandering the halls.  Just watch out for friendly fire."

Dante smirked, saluted and vanished abruptly into the darkness of the base.  Heero watched him go silently, frowning to himself.

"You should have told me that Darren was wandering around," he accused darkly.  Derrick shrugged.

"You expected anything less?  You want us to sit on our butts and miss out on all the fun while you run around like a maniac?  I think not, Hee-chan."

Shaking his head wearily at the Maxwell insanity, Heero started off again towards his destination.  The blueprints weren't anywhere they knew of, but he was certain that they wouldn't be anywhere nice.  That would probably entail passing through at least four top-secret areas, all of which would be heavily guarded, and at least two runs through open areas between buildings.  If they stayed within the grounds of the base, they could sneak up on the soldiers easier, but unfortunately, they had to go through many more people this way.  Derrick had been insistent, however, that they stay inside after seeing the security patrolling the southern area of the base.

Heero took the lead, not surprised when Derrick slipped directly behind him.  He had seen that stunt before from the American pilots.  Hiding behind someone allowed them to jump out at people who didn't know they were there.  It was extremely effective, provided that whoever was in lead didn't get shot first.

Another corner found him face to face with another figure in black, braid hanging over one shoulder.  Heero redirected the gun he had reflexively pulled, sticking his gun in the waist of his spandex short at the same time as the American slipped a similar gun into some hidden sheathe.

"It's just you, Deut," he said softly.  Violet eyes blinked at him.  "If you're headed the way we came from, just watch out for Darren."

"Um, thanks," the American whispered.  Derrick was almost beside himself, turning purple in his efforts not to laugh aloud.  The look on David's face was hilarious.

David scowled at him in passing and disappeared before Heero could get a good look at him.  After all, he was much more muscular than Deut.  Had the lights not been out, Heero would have seen it immediately.  As it was, he was amazed he hadn't been caught by the normally astute pilot.  Derrick made a mental note to stay in front and ward off anyone else he encountered for awhile.

Tapping Heero on the shoulder and pointing behind him, he took the lead with the Japanese pilot reluctantly following him.  The game of hide-and-seek they had going was looking harder by the moment.

*     *     *

Deut jumped into the shadows as two figures sprinted past her.  She carefully kept her eyes on the blond and the brunette as they slipped past, wondering idly if she should join them.  She decided against it.  Derrick was with Heero, so one of them was already accounted for.  She couldn't be seen if she wanted to keep their numbers hidden.  No telling how many of them had already been seen by wandering pilots.

Sighing in frustration at the difficulties their future joke was already causing them, she decided to follow the two, just in case they needed help.  If she was careful, they would never even know she was there.  Patting her pocket to reassure herself that her gun was still there, she fell in behind the two unsuspecting pilots.

*     *     *

David rounded another corner, pulling his gun on Daniel before realizing who he was looking at.  Seeing his brother, he snorted loudly and continued on his way.  He had already run into Heero and Derrick ten minutes ago, and Dante not two minutes after that.  The increased security had forced them to abandon their original plans and run freely through the base looking for things to mess up for Oz.  Unfortunately, the small number of unmanned halls was distressingly few, leaving them struggling not to interfere with each other or be seen by the other pilots.

Someone moved in one of the rooms he passed and David reflexively flattened himself to the wall, gun in hand.  Peeking into the room, he relaxed and continued on his path to find a way to get to the prototype mobile suit.  Wufei had been inside, hacking a small computer for all he was worth, looking for information on the prototype and the blueprints.  Only the emergency power on the base allowed him to work the computer, the lights and almost every other system deemed too nonessential to merit a backup supply of power.  In the shadows not far from him, both Duo and Dustin had been leaning casually against the wall, unnoticed by Wufei.  They had probably been following him for some time now without his knowledge, but then again, they were incredibly good at hiding in plain view.  David had only been able to see them since he was so familiar with all of their tricks.

Three sets of footsteps approached him and he dove into a small office to hide.  Two of them were soft, made by people who were trained to be silent.  The third set was imperceptible to any normal person.  Even he could barely hear it.  He relaxed immediately and grinned to himself.  Only one person could remain that quiet.  Sure enough, a moment later saw Trowa and Quatre passing by him, Deut a few paces behind them, unnoticed.  At the distance of ten feet, she'd be able to hide before they could turn around.  She was incredibly fast.  She peeked into the office as she passed, winking at him and grinning.

David snorted and slunk back into the hall.  Now that he knew where the other pilots were, it was safe for him to run.  Hunkering down low to the ground, he began a smooth lope, covering more distance in a few seconds than he had been able to since had arrived on base.  Not worried about encountering anyone, he could move at his own pace.

He glanced sideways when two shadows leapt out of nowhere from opposite directions and fell in beside him, knowing that if he was running, he had either found something, needed help, or knew where the other pilots were.  Darren was grinning way too happily on his right, making David worry about what he had just done.  He had come from the direction of the soldier's quarters.

"Glued all of the furniture three halls down to the ceiling," he said quietly.  David rolled his eyes.  Donovan snorted.  It held absolutely no tactical advantage, but it had obviously done wonders in the area of amusing the madman.

Hearing the snort from his side, David glanced at the skinnier scientist.  In his hand, he held… something.  It was a long cylinder of glass with a secondary cylinder inside, the twin layers protecting something that he obviously didn't want to handle.  David was certain that he didn't want to know what was in it but was afraid that he was going to find out anyways.

Something was bothering him, however, and he quickly stopped thinking of the small tube.  Something was very wrong and his mind insisted that he figure out what and fix it immediately.  His mind rolled over a few times and he ran a quick tally in his head.  He frowned, not getting the number he wanted.

"Have either of you seen Demitri?"  They shook their heads.

"Neither have I," a nasal voice said from behind them.  David glanced back at Dante, but kept running.  He knew that the hanger was this way and the other pilots were behind them.  It was safe to cluster at the moment.

"We'll call him in a minute," Donovan panted, pulling his gun and taking out a few stray soldiers.

They were almost to the door leading to the outside run.  David had already switched buildings several times trying to avoid security, but now there was no way to hide their tracks.  Around the next corner was the beginning of the final stretch.  Granted, it was the least well known on base, and most lightly guarded, but there were still a fair number of guards.

David spun around the final corner with his gun out at the same time as the three others with him.  The vision that met their eyes had them scattering frantically, weapons and dignity abandoned.  Three of them vanished almost immediately into vents and a convenient door, leaving Donovan standing alone in the middle of the hall to face what they had found.  He would have run too, but he was slower than the other three and probably couldn't have managed to hide before being seen.

Heero glared at him sharply.  He hadn't turned quickly enough to see anyone else before they had managed to hide, but he had heard them.  Behind him, Derrick was grinning sheepishly.  Despite the fact that he was slower than Heero, Derrick had seen all of them.  He was used to his brothers running around like a pack of stampeding rhinos and had suspected that they would show up at the worst possible time.

"Um, hi?" Donovan offered.

Heero grunted in reply and started to turn back towards tinkering with the door.  The electricity was still off and without it none of the electronically monitored doors would open.  He had begun fiddling with the control panel again when something seemed to catch his attention.  He turned back to Donovan warily.

"What is that?" he asked stiffly.

"Nothing important," Donovan said, glancing at the small cylinder in his hand.  The guilty expression on his face gave him away.  Heero scowled.

"You didn't," Derrick said stiffly.

"Not yet," he muttered.  "I was only going to do it on the way out."

"What is that?" Heero repeated angrily.

"It's not dangerous!" Donovan protested.  Heero's gaze flickered over the double glass layering and his expression turned darker.  "Well, it isn't.  It's just going to make life at Oz interesting for awhile."  When Heero reached for it, he jerked it away.  "I wouldn't play with it if I were you."

Heero grunted again and turned back to the door.  Donovan glanced at the ventilation shaft Dante had stuffed himself into and leapt into it while Heero was distracted.  Dante smirked at him as he arrived, pushing past his brother and dropping lightly into the hall.  Derrick watched the exchange with a bemused expression.

Brushing the dust off of his back priest's outfit, Dante moved in closer to peer at what Heero was doing.  Frowning, he reached past the Japanese pilot and pulled out some of the wires in the wall.  Heero glared at him and tried to shove him out of the way, but the American had already cut and crossed six different wires.  With an almighty hiss, the door swung open.  Heero glowered.  Dante smirked.  Derrick had to fight to keep from laughing his ass off.  The indignant expression on Heero's face was priceless.  After tinkering with the door for several minutes and being unable to make it open, Dante had done it in a matter of seconds.  The indignant look turned suspicious.  Dante shrugged.

"I was trained in electronics," he said passively.  Heero scowled.

"Where is it?" he hissed.

"Where is what?"

"That thing you were holding," Heero snapped.  Derrick, unseen by the Japanese pilot, froze and blanched.

"It's somewhere safe," Dante said, placing his hand on a bulge in his pocket.  Heero glared at his pocket, but grunted and disappeared out the door.  Seeing him disappear into the night, shooting everyone in his path with a silenced gun, Dante reached into the pocket he had been fiddling with and pulled out his gun.  The two of them ran after Heero, taking out as many soldiers as he did.

Running out into the open area towards the hanger, Dante immediately noticed the shadowed forms of Duo, Dustin and Duet following the other three pilots as they ran for the hanger as well.  He sucked in a pained breath and tore back inside at the same time Duo did.  Too many of them were visible and none of the pilots had gone after the blueprints.  Granted, no one knew where the documents were, but someone should at least be looking for them.

Falling to rest against a wall, Dante patiently waited for Duo to catch up.  Normally, Duo was much faster than him, but he was still limping slightly and now had to struggle to keep up.  His ankle would have been healed by now had he not been running around on it constantly, but as was expected of anyone possessing Maxwell genes, he couldn't hold still for more than a few seconds.

Duo stumbled to a halt beside him, panting loudly.  Dante glanced at him passively before remembering something.  He frowned.

"Have you seen Demitri?"

Duo shook his head.  "Not since we got here.  Why?"

Grunting, Dante pulled out their communicator, pushed a short sequence of buttons and waited.  And waited.  No answer was forthcoming from the other end.  He tried a slightly different combination of numbers, needing Demitri only to push any key on the thing to indicate he was still safe.  Nothing.

"Shit."

To Be Continued…

I'm back!  *mad cackle*  I finally got my computer up and running again.  Stupid oversized paperweight crashed.  *kicks computer several times while swearing loudly at it*  It was responsible for the massive delay.  Gomen!  Oh, and I still love commentary, by the way.


	8. Chapter 8

Demitri waited patiently, his back to the wall as he hid in the shadows, waiting for Wufei to pass him.  Duo and Dustin were following him already.  The last thing they needed was a third Maxwell to tag along with the group.  He had already seen Derrick and Heero several times.  Deut, the last he had seen, was tagging along with Trowa and Quatre, neither of which had seen her yet.  He knew without checking that the others were roaming the halls either alone or occasionally in small clusters.

He frowned slightly.  Everyone was headed to the hanger on the southernmost part of the base.  No one had found the blueprints, they were no longer on base, or they had simply been forgotten in the excitement of blowing something up.  His bet was a combination of the first and the last of his three theories.

Grumbling, he decided that he would have to take care of it and chew the others out later.  They had no right to leave him with something like that.  He was slower and weaker than any of his siblings and therefore at a distinct disadvantage.  He had to rely on his wits alone.  Granted, that was more than enough to give Oz all kinds of untold grief, but he still didn't appreciate making the run alone.

Huffing indignantly, he ducked into a small office and flipped the computer on, ignoring the angry beeping of the backup battery.  He typed frantically, wishing he was even half as fast at this type of thing as Dante.  The records turned up blank for the location of the blueprints and he frowned slightly, trying again.  Still nothing.

Grumbling, he decided to go about it the old fashioned way and simply tear apart the officers' quarters.  With something that important, they wouldn't give it to a mere soldier.  Also, knowing that all of the Maxwells were coming, something that Darren had made sure they would know, they were bound to move the precious designs somewhere where no one would think to look for them.

Reaching the officers quarters, he snapped open the nearest control panel and used the emergency power to unlock the door.  From there, he had to push it open with brute force.  Considering the weight of the door, this took him several precious moments, but the halls were abandoned and he wasn't concerned.

The door open and out of his way, Demitri immediately knew he had selected the correct room.  This knowledge came to him simply from the flash of movement he saw in his peripheral vision before blackness claimed him.

*     *     *

The four pilots and three Maxwells had made their way to the south hanger when the speakers, trembling miserably under the emergency power, began to make a static-laced announcement.

"Attention Maxwells.  We have captured one of your brothers.  We will ensure his safety if you surrender immediately."

Derrick stumbled to a halt, gun dropping from his numbed fingers.  Heero tugged on his arm roughly before abandoning him in favor of running for cover.  The other three pilots had similarly scattered, trying to ensure that neither they nor any of the Maxwells on the field that they were aware of were shot.

Heero could only watch helplessly as Derrick was surrounded by armed soldiers and ordered to surrender peacefully.  Derrick stood perfectly still for several seconds, head down and shoulders shaking.  The Japanese pilot saw a second shadow in black watching from the shadows near him, recognizing Deut.  He did not see Dustin just beyond her.

Derrick allowed himself to be manhandled roughly by two soldiers who sought to haul him back to the main complex to be jailed.  Many more grunts circled him with guns drawn.  He moved along peacefully until he was almost to the door.

Heero watched in a daze as his friend was half-dragged towards the building.  Just before reaching the door, he went absolutely ballistic.  Derrick began thrashing and swearing, whipping his braid to beat the soldiers holding him immobile.  Heero was preparing to run out to help him when it happened.  Everything within twenty feet of Derrick burst into a searing conflagration.

Soldiers on the edge of the blast staggered away, screaming in agony and rolling on the ground in a futile effort to put themselves out.  The flames themselves flared once in an almighty show of pure death before guttering and dying out, leaving a shadowed figure standing alone in the center of the blast, hunched over and trembling slightly.  Heero tried to move towards him, but Deut caught his arm.

"Don't," she hissed.  "Just leave him alone, Heero."

"But…"

"Don't," she repeated.  "He'll be fine.  No one who values their life will bother him right now."

By the time she had said this, Derrick was gone, vanishing into the main building without a trace.  The only trace of his presence was a perfect sphere of charred, and partially melted, cement that had once been an immaculate walkway.  Heero eyed the sections of liquid stone uncertainly, wondering how the enraged American could have survived the blast.

Trying to ignore the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, he moved towards the hanger again, slipping easily past the panicked security.  He noticed vaguely that the other pilots and Deut were following him.  However, he didn't notice Dustin from where he remained in the bushes.  He didn't notice when the American suddenly vanished into the shadows, either.

*     *     *

Only by furious demand did Duo and Donovan stay behind.  Dante had left them with the assurances that no one would be able to bother him when he was irritated as he was.  They knew his claim to be no exaggeration, so they had allowed him to go alone.  Duo had crawled into the vents to go turn on the power as he had been ordered, still spitting obscenities.

Donovan had watched them go with a blank expression before leaving to spike the base's water supply with the small glass tube he held in his hand.  In it was a combination of progesterone, prolactin and caffeine.  Between the three, everyone on base would end up buxom, lactating and dehydrated.  The last ensured that everyone would drink more to try to correct for that particular problem.  The first two chemicals would take some time to manifest themselves, ensuring that by the time they were detected, everyone would have ingested a large quantity of them.  He smiled with the knowledge that everyone on base would be miserable for a long time from this.  As they should be, he reflected, for daring to attack his brother.

Dante, on the other hand, was out to do some real damage in order to get their brother back.  For a few moments, he had run side by side with Derrick before ordering him to stay with the others.  Naturally, Derrick had protested, loudly, but Dante would not be budged.  After a heated round of glaring, Derrick veered off to cause grief somewhere else on base.  He hadn't been out of sight for more than thirty seconds before an explosion sounded in his wake.

Relieved that he could work safely alone, Dante paused at a small panel in the wall, pulling out a few random wires and stripping them of their protective plastic sheaths.  He crossed several of the larger wires and waited.  A large rumbling explosion was heard on the far end of base.  He grinned.  That had felt good.  A moment later, the lights flickered, courtesy of Duo.  All over base, the electricity came back on.  Dante smiled and continued on his rampage.  What he had planned would be much easier with the use of the base's electricity.  Naturally, he didn't need it, but it would be simpler.

He automatically switched the clip in his gun as he ran, cursing softly when he realized that it was his last.  After this he was out of bullets.  He kept moving, carefully counting his shots as he ran.  Two solders down.  Neither had been armed.  Six shots left.  Another corner and three more guards.  Naturally, both of them were out of ammunition.  Three shots left.  He ended his next encounter with a single guard with his fists, desperate to conserve the minimal firepower he had left.

Stubborn to a fault, he bulldogged his way through the halls.  His next encounter found him facing five soldiers.  Swearing loudly, he used his final three bullets and resorted to fighting with his hands to take down the final two.  Staring at the corpses in utter loathing, he pressed his right hand to his left shoulder to staunch the flow of blood from the lucky shot one of the group had gotten in.  He hadn't even realized that he had been hit until it was over.

Dante had just bent over to collect one of the soldier's guns when he heard footsteps approaching.  He didn't need to look to know that he was cornered with a gun trained on his skull.  Cursing softly, he partially raised his hands and straightened up.

"I have one of them over here!" the guard yelled, attracting others from nearby halls.

Groaning softly, Dante pushed his right hand back to his shoulder and slumped against the wall to distract the soldier from what he was doing.  With his left hand, he carefully flipped open a control panel and pulled several wires free, wrapping his fingers around the free ends of the wires.  He could feel a gentle buzzing running through his body, the hairs on his arm standing on end.

"What are you doing?" the soldier snapped, grabbing him by his sleeve and trying to pull him away from the wall.  Dante grinned malevolently.

Keeping his death grip on the wires in his fingers, he swiveled his free arm around to place his hand on the soldier's face.  The two were knocked apart with the force of a small bomb, the soldier slumping against the floor, unconscious and singed.  Dante trembled slightly against the wall for a moment before releasing the wires in his hand and sprinting for cover.  He could hear the other soldiers approaching and he was too tired to play with them just yet.

The room he ducked into was not empty.  Cursing loudly, he and the soldier attacked simultaneously.  The soldier drew his gun.  Dante grabbed his hand, allowing the current still raging through him to shock the soldier into submission.  The charge was too great and the man slumped to the floor.  Dante stole his gun and promptly kicked him in the ribs to wake him up.

"Where is he?" he snapped.  The soldier just gawked at him.  Dante spat angrily on the ground, barely missing the man's head.  "Where is my brother?"

"In the officers' q-quarters somewhere," he stammered.  At the furious scowl he received, he tried to shrink away from the livid American.  "That's all I know!  I swear!"

Grunting, Dante kicked him in the temple sharply.  He went limp.  Satisfied that the unconscious man was no longer a threat, he leapt into the ventilation shaft and began crawling purposefully towards his target.  Granted, this route was much slower than running, but he neither had the energy nor the ammunition to continue as he had been.  While crawling, he pulled out his small communicator and tapped in a code.

"Daniel here.  Where are you?"

"David here.  Did you find him?"

"Heading towards the officer's quarters on the east end.  That's where Demitri is.  I want both of you to meet me there."

"On the way."

"There in a minute."

Dante closed the connection with them and tapped a second number.  The answer he received was very tense.

"Yes?"

"Derrick, I need you to blow out the entire west side of the compound.  I need a large distraction somewhere where I'm not."

"Done."  The connection closed immediately.

Shoving the small communicator back into his pocket, he continued on his path, silently thanking any gods that could hear him that it hadn't been Darren who had been captured.  Derrick had something of a violent temper when it involved his siblings, but when it came to his lover, he was downright deadly.

A small ripple of a shockwave was the only warning he had before the entire base bucked on its foundation.  He could feel the temperature rising drastically.  He braced himself as best as he could, but was still hard pressed to stay on his hands and knees.  After several minutes, the tremors stopped and he started moving again, wondering if it had been a good idea to tell Derrick to do that.  Someone leapt out of the shadows ahead of him and he paused, glaring scathingly at Dustin.

"What are you doing here?  I thought you were with the others."

Dustin shrugged.  "I found which room Demitri is in.  Just thought you'd like to know," he said easily.  "I've already told David and Daniel."

"You get around too damn fast for your own good," Dante muttered.  "Very well.  Lead on."

Like twinned wraiths, the two moved at ludicrous speeds through the darkness of the base's ventilation system.  In only moments, they peered down through a grate into a room where several officers stood with Treize, Zechs and Demitri.

"David and Daniel will already be outside," Dustin whispered.

"Gun," Dante hissed.  Silently, Dustin handed him his weapon and disappeared into the shadows once more.

Not hesitating, Dante kicked out the grate and dropped into the room, firing at the soldiers before he hit the floor.  Running out of bullets before finishing off all of the soldiers, he chunked his gun, knocking out the nearest man just as David and Daniel burst into the room, firing as they entered.  The remaining two guards fell immediately.  All three stopped dead when they saw Zechs press a gun to Demitri's temple.  Dante fumed, a muscle twitching wildly in one eye.

"Surrender," Treize said, aiming his own gun at the twitching Maxwell.  Dante bared his teeth threateningly.  David and Daniel blanched and ran from the room at a sprint, knowing that look.

Dante reached into his pocket, pulling out their communicator and tapping a code.  He didn't even hear what Deut said, only vaguely realizing she had answered.

"Sprinkler system, officers' quarters," he snapped, closing the connection.  Instantly, the water came on, drenching the four occupants of the room.

"Surrender," Treize repeated, motioning to Zechs nervously.

"Give him to me," Dante said flatly.

"You're out of ammunition and we have one of your brothers.  Your other two brothers had the common sense to flee.  Surrender," Treize stated firmly.

Dante curled his lips back in something that might have been a grim smile.  Seemingly ignoring the two men holding his brother at gunpoint, he moved to the nearest wall and slammed his fist through it, pulling back with a large wire twined around his fingers.  He pulled a length of wire out of the wall and draped the sparking end dangerously close to the floor, where water had begun to pool.  Dante looked directly at Zechs, ignoring Treize since he wasn't the one holding on to Demitri.

"Give me my brother," he ordered in a monotone.  Zechs paled, but Treize wasn't willing to give in.

"If you do that, you'll electrocute yourself as well as your brother," he explained calmly, issuing the fuming Maxwell one of his infuriating smirks.

Dante ignored him completely, reasoning lost on him.  When Zechs did not immediately respond to his order, he snapped the wire downwards, clipping the water for an instant.  Current jolted through all four men in the room.  Treize staggered into the wall and Zechs nearly dropped Demitri.

"Give him to me," Dante snapped, lowering the wire dangerously close to the water a second time.

"You'll kill him!" Zechs hissed before Treize could get him zapped again.  Treize started to support the line of thinking, but choked on his words when Dante smiled nastily.

"Wrong answer," he breathed, dropping the wire into the water.

Electricity sparked across the puddle on the floor.  Muscles locked from the current, the two commanders stood absolutely still, unable to even draw breath.  Dante moved across the room fluidly, unhindered by the power racing through him, to pull his brother forcefully from the blonde's arms.  Cradling the unconscious form in his arms to shield him from the deadly current, he stormed from the room.

Free from the large puddle on the floor, and thereby the raging electricity, Dante slumped against a wall, exhausted.  Behind him, a loud pop signaled the wire suddenly going dead in the room he had just left.  He grimaced and began staggering slowly down the hall with Demitri cradled gently in his arms.  He would have left the current on and left the two men for dead, but his orders had not been to kill the leaders of Oz.

Barely twenty paces from the room where Treize and Zechs laid unconscious, David and Daniel reappeared.  David took Demitri from his brother.  Daniel looped one of Dante's arms over his shoulders and pulled him along.

"Everyone else abandoned base," Daniel said simply.  "G ordered us to retreat immediately.  We'll come for the blueprints again later."

"What about the prototype?"

"Spontaneous combustion," Daniel answered easily.  Dante snorted loudly, wondering when Derrick had found the time.  That shifted his line of thinking immediately to his pyromaniac brother.

"Derrick?" he breathed, fighting to remain conscious.

"Darren has him," David assured him.  "Duo, Dustin and Donovan left together.  Deut dragged the other pilots with her."

"Dustin and Donovan are to meet up with Deut at the next safehouse," Daniel continued.  "You and Derrick aren't going anywhere until you've rested."

Dante nodded and allowed unconsciousness to claim him.  Both Daniel and David were stronger and faster than he was and he trusted them to get off of the base safely.  Exhaustion became overwhelming and blackness claimed him.

To Be Continued…

Ooh… I'm starting to mess around with some weird stuff here.  Will be explained later, I promise, but until then, you must wait.  *ducks out of view to avoid thrown items*  Hey!  No hurt evil authoress!  Tell me what you think about the most recent Maxwell development.  R&R!!!


	9. Chapter 9

Deut and Donovan wandered Quatre's mansion freely after their return, leaving Dustin to stay in bed with the excuse that he didn't feel well.  While the other pilots assumed that he was injured, the truth was that he was simply exhausted.  Though he hadn't exerted himself as greatly as had Dante or Derrick, he was still weary.  Keeping track of the pairings they had kept on base, they told the others that he was Darren.  Heero had thought he was with Duo and he had seen Deut just after Oz's announcement.

Unfortunately, this meant that Donovan almost made the mistake of pretending to limp, as Duo's ankle was still slightly swollen.  He only barely remembered in time that Derrick had accompanied Heero across the base without limping and resuming the gimp routine would have aroused suspicion.  To prevent further misunderstandings, he called David and ordered him to firmly tie up Duo until his ankle was completely healed.  Needless to say, Duo was not happy.

It took a lot of vague answers to evade the questioning of their friends.  Though they didn't lie, they could do a merry little dance around the truth.  Still not having pulled the pranks they intended, they remained secretive about their numbers, carefully sidestepping any question aimed at them.

"Is Darren up yet?" Quatre asked Deut without warning, causing her to pause in consideration.  Having received no distinctive answers, the other four pilots had resorted to questioning them at random, sporadic intervals, hoping to get a clear answer while they weren't paying attention.

"There's no telling with that pervert," Deut answered, grinning widely at her distinctively dirty interpretation of his innocent question.  "Besides, I wouldn't want to know, so why ask me?"  Quatre frowned, a blush creeping across his pale features.

"Is he awake yet?" Quatre asked, careful not to give her another opening to embarrass him.

"He could be up at any time," Deut grinned, still avoiding answering.  That answer was true for any of her brothers.  They all kept strange hours.  So did she, for that matter.  Even though that answer was somewhat innocent, she leered as she said it, further embarrassing the Arabian.  Huffing softly, the only display of anger the gentle blond would show, Quatre left the room, missing Deut's amused grin.  From her angle, she could see that his blush had spread across the back of his neck as well.

Once he was out of sight, she slumped against the wall, still slightly disoriented from her efforts on base.  Derrick, Dante and Dustin hadn't been the only ones to have given themselves a bit of a workout.  Even though she hadn't done as much as they had, she was still tired.  She wearily fished the communicator out of her pocket when she heard it beep softly, flipping it open absently.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Duo here," a slightly sheepish voice responded.  Deut stiffened slightly.

"What is it?"

"Um, I hate to ask you this, but we're sending in a strike team to get the blueprints from Oz before they can build a replacement for their prototype."

"Who all is going?" Deut sighed in defeat.

"David, Darren and you."

Deut paused.  "That's not the best grouping I've heard of.  We should wait until our numbers are higher before attempting that."

"Not an option.  I'm sorry, but G ordered that we destroy it now."

"I know, I know.  I'll be out to meet them in a bit.  Is it still in Madrid?"

"We believe so," Duo said quickly.  "Demitri said that they didn't move it.  Zechs and Treize apparently thought that we would never think to look for the blueprints in the wreckage of the base."

"He's awake?"

"Yeah, but he has one hell of a headache.  He'll be fine.  Dante is awake, but he's not up to moving around yet.  As for Derrick, he's awake, but he's kind of going into occasional seizures.  I've never seen him go all out before.  Hell, none of us have gone that far.  Not since the last time Demitri…  Anyways, I'm amazed that he's conscious already."

"It's been three days," Deut protested.  "Of course they'd be awake.  Dustin's fine, but still hamming it up so he can keep his lazy butt in bed.  I'm really going to hurt him if he keeps it up."

"Is he up to going on a run?"

Deut paused, considering.  "I don't think so.  He's doing better, but I don't want to send him on a mission yet.  To be honest, I'd rather not go either."

"We need someone fast," Duo said softly.  "I'd go, but I'm still chained up."

Hearing the statement, Deut finally smiled.  Apparently the others had taken the order to tie up the hyperactive loudmouth seriously.  The clear irritation in Duo's voice caused a smirk to slip onto her face, her good mood returning immediately.

"Will the others be ready by the time we get back?" she asked innocently.

The irked quality to Duo's voice vanished instantly.  She could almost see him grinning at the question.

"Of course.  I'll get everything ready.  Are you sure you want to do this now?  We could play with them a bit more, you know."

"You're right," Deut chuckled.  "I think we should play with them a bit more.  But I still want to stand their hair on end eventually."

"David and Daniel are going to hate us for that one."

"Too bad for them."

"So be it.  We'll be torturing them by the time you three are back," Duo responded, closing the connection.

Deut only paused to gather a few implements of destruction before leaving.  She left a hastily scrawled note left on the counter, explaining that she had an errand to take care of and she would be back soon.  In the nearly illegible note, she simply omitted the full details of her errand, knowing that Heero would be more than slightly ticked if he thought that she had gone back to the Oz base.  She grinned as she hotwired one of Quatre's many cars and drove off.

*     *     *

Deut frowned and pulled back slightly, motioning for her brothers to stay out of sight.  David stayed out of sight without question, but Darren was another matter.  He didn't seem to care what they were facing as long as he got a chance to blow something up.  Ignoring both of his siblings, he darted into the hall.  Gunfire resounded immediately through the halls.

"Idiot!" Deut hissed, remaining hidden.  She only snuck a quick peek to see what was going on.  Darren was sprawled on the floor, unconscious, grinning and surrounded by several furious guards.

"He hurt?" David whispered.

"No, I don't think so," she replied wearily.  "Judging by the expression on his face, he's acting like a decoy.  I guess it makes sense, but I'd still prefer that he hadn't done that.  Now Oz knows that we're here."  She sighed.  "You go get him out of wherever they put him.  I'll get the blueprints."

"Done," David answered promptly.  He immediately turned to a small room with a computer, already waiting to see where they were going to put his brother.

Deut dashed the other direction down the hall from where they were dragging Darren to a cell by his braid.  She was silently thankful that only she and David were along with the insane pervert, knowing that if Derrick were with them, the base would have already been destroyed.  Luckily, he was still unconscious for the most part and far away where he was unable to know what was happening.

In a matter of minutes, she had crossed the length of the base, doubling back several times when she saw someone in the distance.  No one saw her, but she wasn't concerned about being seen.  She was too fast for them to catch.  A few more seconds found her in the depths of the commander's quarters.  Unsurprisingly, the doors were all locked.  Using one of her favorite Maxwell skills, she pulled lock picks out her braid and was inside before five seconds had passed.  She kicked the door shut behind her.

Startled, the occupant of the room looked up at her from his computer and jerked back in surprise, scrabbling at his hip for a gun that was on a table halfway across the room.  Deut grinned and slipped to the holstered gun before the gaping blond could even rise to his feet.

"Well, well," Deut grinned, spinning the appropriated gun in her fingers.  "If it isn't the masochist who threatened to hurt my brother."

"We have one of your brothers in custody right now," Zechs stammered, visibly upset.  "It would be unwise to attack me when he's in danger."

"You won't have him for long, I assure you," Deut laughed.  An instant later, her features turned ice cold.  "Now.  About those blueprints."

Zechs flinched as her expression changed abruptly.  Even knowing that he was unarmed, and more than likely outnumbered by Maxwells, he stood his ground and pulled a small pistol from his desk drawer.  Deut shook her head.

"Men," she grumbled.

Zechs openly gaped when she seemed to vanish from view, her form blurring slightly as she circled behind him.  In the mere second it took her to slip around the room, he knew that he had lost.  Silently, and with as much dignity as he could muster with his eyes wide and expression disbelieving, he surrendered to the inevitable.  The butt of a gun slammed into the back of his skull, dropping him unconscious to the floor.

Deut barely paused to check on the blond to make sure he was truly incapacitated before she began rummaging through the drawers to his desk.  In the third drawer on the right, she found what she wanted.  Folding up the blueprints roughly, she shoved the papers down the front of her shirt and turned towards the door.  A brief bout of vicious mischievousness hit her and she turned back to Zechs's computer, tapping a quick series of commands before running for the door.  On the monitor, the words 'Formatting Hard Drive' flashed innocently as she escaped into the base.

*     *     *

David waited patiently by the computer until it displayed the location of the idiot he called a brother.  Memorizing the cell number, he ran down the halls, calmly decking any soldiers he happened to pass.  He didn't even bother to avoid security, merely opting to leave a trail of coldcocked soldiers in his wake.  No one even managed to raise a gun in his direction before they were down for the count and he was gone.

He found Darren's cell with minimal effort.  Bawdy lyrics of some obscure tavern song could be heard echoing from the tiny room.  Growling, he rapped sharply on the door and yelled at the idiot within.

"Put your pants on!  I know you're mooning the cameras!"

Darren paused in singing long enough to reply.  "I am not!  I was just drawing dirty pictures on the walls!"

Grumbling, David slipped his fingers into the metal bars around the tiny window worked into the upper door.  Muscles in his arms corded and he grunted softly, pulling the two hundred pound steel door off its frame and hydraulic supports, tossing it aside as though it wasn't a challenge, which to him, it wasn't.  He walked just into the cell and scowled.

"Moron!  What are you doing?  You told me your pants were up!" he roared.

"They were, but mooning the cameras was a wonderful idea," Darren said calmly, wiggling his bared behind at the small lens in the corner of the room.  "I'm surprised I didn't think of it."

"We're going," David snapped testily.

"Come on," Darren wheedled.  "Just five more minutes!  I haven't finished my drawing!"

David was livid.  He stormed in to drag his brother out by force when he noticed the picture on the wall.  Though incomplete, it clearly depicted Treize and Zechs in a rather compromising, and almost physically impossible, position.

"We're going," David repeated sternly.

"But…"

"If you hurry, we'll pause on the way out and you can paint it on Tallgeese."

"Alright!" Darren crowed.  "And later, I think we should get Dante to whip up a little computer animation of this to mail to everyone in Oz!"

David snorted, but he didn't protest.  Like any true Maxwell, causing anyone and everyone grief was in his blood.

*     *     *

Treize looked up at his computer, more than slightly miffed.  It was bad enough that they had lost the only set of blueprints, a feat that no one fully understood how it was accomplished.  Then, he had discovered that Tallgeese had been painted, again, just to irritate them with the depiction of something completely obscene.  Despite the fact that only a few people had actually seen it, every person on base knew about it.  To top things off, someone had hacked onto his personal computer.  He was about to snap closed the small screen that popped up from sheer irritation when a short computer animated film began to play.  Three words flashed on the screen almost too quickly for him to catch.  'A Maxwell Production.'

The blond present in the first few seconds caught his attention and despite himself, he paused to watch.  He recognized Zechs clearly from the stunning computer work, and wondered briefly what the insane menaces were planning this time.  His answer was immediate when Zechs stripped to the buff and entered a room filled with various whips, manacles and instruments of torture.  Chained to the wall was a perfectly depicted image of himself.  Treize swore and tried to close the window.  It immediately popped up again.

Furious, he pitted his hacking skills against whichever of the black clad menaces had sent the file.  He stopped cold when he saw that the file had been sent to every computer on every Oz base, playing on an endless loop.  He slammed his head against the wooden desk once, hard, to try to force his blinding humiliation under control.  Three words, barely audible from where his face was pressed into the wood, echoed in the room along with the sounds of the forged film.

"I hate Americans."

To Be Continued…

There you have it!  I worked the title into the storyline.  *evil smirk*  Now then… we just have to wait for the insane bakas to pull their pranks on the other unsuspecting pilots.  R&R!!!!  Oh, and be warned, updates will be monstrously slow since I'm being worked to the bone and all, having just started medical school.  I know I've said it once, but R&R!!!


	10. Chapter 10

"Well," Darren drawled, trying to sound indifferent and failing miserably.  He gave up immediately and grinned widely.  "Are we going to start with this or what?"

"We're starting, we're starting," Donovan laughed, waving his hands dismissively at the impatient look it earned him.  "We just have to do this right if we want to drive everyone stark raving mad."

"Which means that Duo, Dustin and Deut have to be the ones teasing Heero," Dante said, his normally aloof attitude vaporizing in the Maxwell spirit as they planned their prank on the unsuspecting pilots.  "We can't risk anyone slower.  They might be caught."

"Bite me," Derrick snapped.

"Anytime, anywhere," Darren leered.  Deut threw a pillow at him.

"Don't start that now," she warned.  "We have people to torture."

"Fine, fine.  Don't get your panties in a wad."

"Would you pay attention?" Dante huffed.  Derrick turned to listen.  However, Darren only snorted and gave him the finger.  As always, he was ignored.

"We already have the blueprints of Quatre's mansion in Tokyo," David said, spreading the sheets of information across the table.  "I know everyone has already memorized every hall, room and vent.  We'll have to be careful not to run into each other since we'll have four separate pilots on our tails."

"We just have to get them to chase us," Daniel said, frowning.  "Heero and Wufei are easy to trick into trying to ring our necks.  Trowa is going to take a bit of work, but I think it can be done if we do the same thing to him as Heero.  But how are we going to get Quatre in on it?"

The ten braided menaces glanced around at each other, calculating each other's personalities.  It was several minutes before anyone spoke.

"Darren would have been a good choice, but he's busy with Wufei," Dante sighed.  "Pity.  No one can drive the poor little blond insane like he can."

"Thank you."

"I'm not sure if that was a complement, squid for brains," Deut said flatly.  Darren pretended like he hadn't heard her.

"I guess I can do it," Derrick said.  "I'm not as… abrasive, as Darren, but I can get under his skin eventually."

"Eventually won't work.  We're on a time limit, here.  We can only keep this up for so long," Dante reminded him.

"I can do it!  I'll have an easier time than those three," he said, waving at Duo, Dustin and Deut.  "I don't have to keep out of Heero's reach, after all."

"True," Dante admitted.  "They are the runners.  David and Daniel will have to get out of the way when the time comes."  He paused, frowning.  "Are you two sure you can keep away from Trowa?"

"We're not as fast as you, but we'll be fine," Donovan assured him.  "Demitri can hold his own for long enough."

"You make me sound like a weakling!" Demitri protested, managing to sound slightly affronted.  His pouting was ruined by the slight glimmer of amusement in his violet eyes and the hint of a smile that kept twitching his lips.  He knew he was the slowest of the group, but was also keenly aware that speed had nothing to do with the ability to wreak havoc on unsuspecting innocents.

"I'm just not sure that we can get Trowa to chase any of us," David said slowly.  "He's not that easy to tick off."

"We'll just have to keep at it until he starts chasing us.  He'll cave eventually," Daniel assured him.  "Everyone does."

"Does everyone know what they're doing?" Dante asked.

Immediately, ten faces broke out into identical evil grins.

*     *     *

Deut slipped into Heero's private room, grinning at the silent pilot from where he was tapping away incessantly at his laptop.  Sneaking up behind him, knowing perfectly well that he knew she was there, she leaned over his shoulder and spoke directly into his ear, breathing softly into it as she did so.

"Oy, Hee-chan!  I was just headed to the kitchen to get some food.  My brothers and I are going to play a game.  Do you want to play?" she asked, smiling sweetly.  _Like you really have a choice in this,_ she thought wryly.  _The game is tag, and you're it, whether you like it or not._

"No," he said stiffly.  "I have a report to type."

"Aw, you're no fun!" Deut pouted.  Trying to look disappointed, she spun from the room, waiting until she was out of sight before grinning ear to ear.

She bounded lightly into the kitchen where Duo and Dustin were waiting.  David and Daniel were still out of sight.  The three of them gathered a few random snacks and ran back down the hall, chattering with each other as they went.  No one bothered to look at Heero as they passed his room.  They knew he was watching them.  Anyone in their right mind who heard the word 'game' associated with the Maxwells would be wary.

Still chattering about absolutely nothing important, the three wandered into Deut's room, which was conveniently right next to Heero's.  For several minutes, they were content to throw chips at each other and tell crude jokes.  Winking at them, Deut hopped to her feet.

"I need to get something from the kitchen!  I'll be right back," she said, skipping lightly from the room.

Dustin grinned widely but stayed silent.  Duo had to bite his lip to keep from making any noise.  They intended to confuse Heero as much as possible.  He was under the impression that no Maxwell could remain silent for more than three seconds straight, and using that, they were going to make him second guess his knowledge of their locations.  Only a minute later, they heard Deut approaching, poking fun at David as he bounced along beside her, mimicking the average Maxwell giddiness.  The tapping on the keyboard in the next room went silent.  Heero had seen the inconsistency in numbers.

Duo calmly got up and walked into the closet to hide.  He'd get out and join the chase again after it was true pandemonium.  Deut waited as she talked easily, wondering silently if Heero was going to come in to check on what he had seen.  The clacking of keys started again, and Deut grinned.

"Hey!" David exclaimed loudly.  There was a slight wavering in the steady clicking from the next room.  Heero was listening to every word.  "Where are the pickles?"

"In the kitchen, I imagine," Deut supplied.  "Come on."

Already on her feet, she motioned for David to follow her.  Dustin laid down on the floor and rolled under the bed out of sight.  The braided pair skipped back down the hall, seeing Heero watching them out of his peripheral vision as they passed.  They continued to the kitchen as though they hadn't noticed.  Daniel was waiting for them.

"Is he watching?" he asked eagerly as they arrived.

"Of course he is!" Deut reprimanded with mock indignation.

"Then lets get him!"

Exchanging conspiratory glances, the three started back to the room, still pretending like nothing was wrong as they passed Heero yet again.  This time, he was no longer pretending not to notice.  His eyes were glued to the hall and he was sitting tensely in his seat.  David and Daniel passed without suspicion, but when Deut bounced after them, the third Maxwell returning when only two had departed, they heard Heero jump to his feet and tear towards them.  Deut yanked the door shut in his face and disappeared into her room, running for the window directly behind David and Daniel.  She was just leaping out of the window when Heero broke into the room.  Undaunted, Heero sprinted to the window, set to jump out after them when a door slammed open behind him and the bed almost upturned itself.

Heero jumped, nearly loosing his footing as he tried to spin faster than he was physically capable of moving.  He barely caught the tail end of two braids as they disappeared out the door, running in opposite directions down the long hall of the mansion.  Cursing loudly, he charged after the nearest figure he had seen, unknowingly darting after Dustin, swearing silently that he was going to ring all of their necks.

He hadn't gone three steps into the hall when a foot from some empty room popped out directly into his path, sending him sprawling.  Out of the room charged a black-clad form, braid trailing behind him as he ran for his life.  Heero was on his feet immediately, lunging for the end of the flapping braid.  He missed by several inches and ended up ducking into a neat roll to avoid landing on his face a second time.  Unwilling to admit defeat, he lurched to his feet again and gave chase, yelling as he went.

"OMAE O KOROSU!!!"

*     *     *

Wufei stepped out of the private shower in his room, frowning when he heard several thumps and various swearwords echoing from various regions of the house.  Glowering at the Maxwell-induced noise, he continued to scrub his hair with a towel as he glanced around the room for his shirt.  He frowned when it wasn't laid out on the back of his chair where he could have sworn he had left it.  His pants were there, but his shirt was not.  Instead, his dark blue tank top was lying innocently on the bedspread.  Frowning slightly, he yanked on his loose white pants before going towards the bed, wary of some stupid prank that one of the Maxwells was sure to have pulled while his clothes were out of his direct sight.

Not seeing any mousetraps on the floor by the bed, stink bombs or airborne dye attached to trip strings, or even the hint of a motion detector, he edged towards the bed warily, glancing around as he inched forward.  Still seeing nothing, he reached hesitantly for his shirt.  The moment he leaned forward, it struck.

A large black-clad cannonball slammed into him from behind, carrying him to the bed face first.  Before he could even begin to defend himself, he was flipped over to his back and lips were pressed to his own.  A tongue sought entrance to his mouth and he was prepared to bite it when his legs were pulled up to rest on either side of his attacker's waist.  Hands were all over him for several seconds while he tried to fight back his assailant.  As suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

Wufei looked up in shock as the black-clad figure leapt back out of harms way, grinning shamelessly at him.  The offender leaned casually against the door, fiddling with his long chestnut braid.

"Was it good for you?" Darren leered, blowing him a kiss.  Wufei exploded.

"KISAMA!!!  MAXWELL!!!"

Darren needed no prompting to run for his life.  He was beginning to wonder if it had been such a good idea to piss off the Chinese pilot with no one to switch the chase with.  He was bound to get tired eventually, something that the enraged raven-haired boy was not likely to do anytime in the near future.  Nevertheless, he was out the door and running for his life before Wufei could take a single step towards him.  Thankfully, he only had to keep it up for a little while.  The game wouldn't last long.

*     *     *

Derrick stood outside of the underground hanger, casually flying a kite, knowing that Quatre was working on Sandrock.  It was nearing lunch and he knew that the innocent little blond would emerge soon to get something to eat.  Only moments ago, he knew that the others had set their parts of the plan into action.  His part was considerably the most difficult to plan, if not to carry out.  He had had to think of a way to infuriate the Arabian pilot, which was almost impossible since the small pilot was so easygoing.  However, he had found a way.

Sure enough, he hadn't been there for more than a few minutes with his high-flying kite when the seemingly harmless blond emerged.  Seeing him, the smaller pilot scurried over to greet him.

"Hello, um… Darren?"

"Nope," Derrick responded, still tugging at his kite gently to get it to new heights.

"Sorry," Quatre answered contritely.  He grinned bashfully and tried to atone for his mistake.  "I was going to eat lunch.  Do you want to join me?"

"Sorry, Q-man, but I'm kinda busy flying this thing," he said.  "Isn't it a beauty?"

Polite as always, Quatre glanced up at the high-flying kite.  He was about to agree with the braided pilot when something clicked in his mind and he froze.  Not wanting to believe that even a Maxwell would stoop to something so low, he allowed his gaze to trail up the enormous 'kite string' to the gargantuan 'kite' flying high in the clear blue sky.  His jaw dropped.

"That… that's my…" he stammered, starting to see red.  All of his boxers had been tied together to form the string, the pink bits of cloth standing out fantastically against the cerulean sky.  At the top of the line was a bed sheet he had had since he was a child, small Winnie the Pooh figures covering the pink sheet.

"I know," Derrick said smoothly, pretending not to notice the blonde's twitching.  "It's amazing.  The line even has it's own racing stripes!"

He sensed the lunge before he saw it and gracefully jumped to the side, dropping the string of boxers in his hands.  Quatre had already recovered from the missed leap and was positioned for another when Derrick ran for the house, grinning to himself.  This was certainly going to be amusing when all hell broke loose.

*     *     *

Trowa was working silently on his computer, studying various Oz activities, when he heard approaching footsteps.  Disinterestedly, he glanced up to see one of the Maxwells peeking into his room, debating whether or not to enter.  After a moment, he left without saying a word.  Shrugging, Trowa resumed reading.  He would have continued doing so, but three minutes later, it happened again, only that time, there were two of them.  They left quickly before he could say anything.

Hesitantly, Trowa turned back to his computer, almost fearing what the braided pilots were up to.  They were never silent unless they were doing something.  Sure enough, his suspicions were confirmed a moment later when he heard a distinctive death threat echo through the mansion.

"OMAE O KOROSU!!!"

Sighing, Trowa decided to ignore it.  He had no intention of getting between Heero and whomever he was chasing.  Not two minutes after that, he heard a second shout for Maxwell blood, this time coming from the other end of the mansion, courtesy of a certain incensed Chinese pilot.

"KISAMA!!!  MAXWELL!!!"

Trowa shook his head, knowing without checking that Darren had done something again to embarrass the raven-haired boy.  It happened at least three times a day, every day, and usually once during the night as well.  It was turning into an unbreakable routine.  However, the third scream shocked him.

"DUO!  Get back here!"

Trowa's visible eye widened to its fullest extent.  Quatre was screaming for blood.  The innocent, harmless, easygoing blond was in a murderous rage.  He was suddenly frightened of what they had done.  Unbidden, he peeked into the hall.  Seeing nothing, he crept through the mansion until he saw a long chestnut braid disappear into an empty room.  When he looked in, however, the owner of said braid was long gone.

Thundering footsteps alerted him to jump out of the way before he was plowed over by Darren and Wufei, the Chinese pilot slowly closing in on his target.  He almost had the braid in his hand when a shadow detached itself from the wall and pushed him directly into Trowa.  Curses surrounded the tangled limbs as the two pulled apart, giving Donovan a head start before Trowa could even think about chasing him.  Unfortunately, the green-eyed pilot didn't take the bait, opting to watch Wufei tear after Darren again.

When the interfering Maxwell disappeared, Trowa wandered down the hall after Wufei, watching the two crisscross the mansion and grounds near the house.  At one point, Heero tore by chasing a braided menace of his own, Dustin easily outpacing him.  When the two passed, Heero suddenly abandoned the chase and charged in a different direction, flushing another Maxwell out of the shadows in hopes of catching the unsuspecting braided idiot.  Unfortunately for the Japanese pilot, Dante was faster than him too.

Swear words could be heard echoing in the air as Dante led Heero on a large intricate loop of the house, trying to shake him.  Heero was supposed to be chasing Duo or Deut once he gave up on Dustin.  Dante had been waiting to ambush Trowa.  Seeing the difficulty, Deut jumped out of her hiding place and ran three quick loops around the brunette pilot.  In her rounds, she yanked his shirt over his head, dropped his pants, and pushed the unsuspecting pilot into the wall.

Trowa straightened his clothes and stared.  He would have expected that kind of behavior inflicted on Wufei or Heero, not him.  As a general rule, the Maxwells didn't bother either Quatre or himself.  He was about to retreat to his room to hide when something clicked in his mind.

Wufei had been chasing Darren, cursing at the top of his lungs.  One.  Heero had been chasing one of the Maxwells.  Two.  The Japanese pilot had switched to go after a different braided madman in the shadows.  Three.  Now he had just been looped by what had appeared to be Deut.  Four.  He knew that Quatre was chasing someone.  Five.  In something of a daze, he approached the balcony to watch the three ongoing chases.  It was possible that Quatre had lost track of who he was chasing and Heero had gone after that Maxwell, abandoning his pursuit of Deut and leaving her free to circle him.  Desperately wanting to believe the unlikely possibility, he watched the chaos below him.

Two black-clad, braided nuisances ran towards each other, holding out their left arms as they drew nearer.  Locking elbows, they spun in circles rapidly before breaking formation and running in new directions.  Just as they separated, Quatre and Wufei approached from opposite directions and stared, both having lost track of which one they were after.  They each chose a direction and ran after their target again, neither knowing if they were after the correct menace.

Trowa just shook his head and decided that it was probably a better idea to hide until the madness had ended.  He was turning to leave when he heard an outraged squawk and saw a braided figure carrying Quatre over his shoulders as he ran out the back door cackling.

"Duck pond!" he roared, making it sound like a war cry.

A loud splash could be heard from inside and Trowa winced.  He was torn between helping round up the menaces and running for his life.  The decision was taken from him when he was pushed headfirst over the rail on the balcony into the large guest room below.  For once, his superb reflexes failed him and he was certain that he was going to break his neck.  A shadow jumped out and caught him just before he landed and he grunted at the sudden halt in his descent.  He wasn't surprised when he was thrown over a broad shoulder and hauled outside to join Quatre in the pond.  For some reason, he couldn't even bring himself to be surprised when Wufei joined them in the water a few seconds later.

The three pilots swam a bit awkwardly back to the edge of the pond when Heero arrived, thrashing in the arms of two Maxwells, to be tossed over their heads into the depths of the water.  He surfaced using language that caused even the escaping Maxwells to pause and gape.  The four waterlogged pilots glared after the two remaining braided pilots to find themselves face to cheek with two bared, wiggling posteriors.

"Heero," Trowa called.  Heero scowled at him.  "I've seen five of them.  What about you?"

"Five," he confirmed.

"Tell me you're joking!" Wufei yelped, looking very pale.

"They're getting away," Trowa said, interrupting the incipient rant.  He nodded towards the two Maxwells disappearing into the house.

The four pilots scrambled out of the water and ran after the retreating forms.  Quatre, for once, didn't protest when they tracked water and mud into his house.  They were just in time to see the tip of a braid vanish into the adjoining living room.  No one hesitated before going after the only visible Maxwell.  As one, the four sprinted into the next room and, as one, the four came skidding to a horrified stop.

Standing proudly, side by side, were ten identical figures dressed in black, ten identical evil grins on their faces.  For a moment, the four pilots could only stare, shock evident on all of their faces.  It was when Wufei scrambled to retreat that the battle cry sounded from somewhere within the malicious, braided ranks.

"GET 'EM!"

The four terrified pilots tried to scatter, but their tactic proved unsuccessful, as they were badly outnumbered.

To Be Continued…

I got another section posted!  I know I took forever, but I have no more spare time.  Gomen!  The next section will continue with what happens to the four hapless pilots in the clutches of the evil Maxwells.  I almost feel guilty about what I'm planning to do to them.  R&R!


	11. Chapter 11

Heero found himself cornered in his room, of all places, facing three wildly grinning Maxwells, each hiding something behind his back.  His gaze shifted rapidly between the three, looking for some weakness, anything to save himself.  Had it just been a single braided lunatic, he wouldn't have been worried.  Two, he was reasonably sure he could handle.  But three was one too many.  Little did he know that with these three, any one of them could have pinned him single-handedly.  Handcuffed and blindfolded.

Two of the approaching trio looked absolutely identical, and he was shocked to see that when they were side by side, he could actually see some variations in the way they held themselves.  He was even more shocked when he noticed that two of them were blatant bodybuilders.  The third was reasonably built, but nothing compared to the other two.  Heero charged him, thinking that was where his best chances laid.

Dante saw Heero's logic long before the Japanese boy had implemented it and casually dropped to the floor as Heero neared him, kicking out the attacking pilot's legs.  Not bothered by the swinging fists or flying kicks from where the panicking, spandex-clad boy was fighting desperately on the floor, David and Daniel closed in, bringing out the weapons they had hidden behind their backs.  Several rolls of duct tape.  Prussian blue eyes widened to their fullest extent as ripping noises filled the air.

*     *     *

Wufei realized he was being herded a moment too late, when he found himself cornered in his room, alone against two Maxwells.  Both were looking at him hungrily.  He glanced at the window and tried to gage his chances of surviving a five-story plunge without injury.  He was still debating when he heard the door shut and the lock click.  Decision made, he bolted for the window.  A lean figure in black was already leaning against it, grinning.

Cursing loudly in Chinese, he backpedaled and looked for another escape route.  Finding none, he dropped into a fighting stance, praying that he could hold his own.  Though confident of his fighting abilities, he was painfully aware of the fact that the Maxwells were horrendously fast.  He'd seen them move before on missions and while running from him and knew what they were capable of.  He coiled, waiting for them to come closer before striking.

The two Maxwell brothers studied his stance, glanced at each other and shrugged slightly.  One stood perfectly still while the other moved away to circle him at a safe distance.  Growling, Wufei tried to turn where he could watch both of them at once, wondering which one of them was going to attack him first.  He spun to face the sudden movement in his peripheral vision.

Derrick charged forward a single step before leaping back out of Wufei's reach.  When the Chinese pilot predictably turned to face him, Darren calmly leaned over, grabbed the edge of the rug in both hands and yanked upwards with all of his strength.  Unprepared for his footing to suddenly disappear, Wufei found himself on his face with two sets of hands holding him down before he had a chance to regain his feet.  A damp cloth was pressed over his nose and mouth.  Wufei tried to hold his breath, but after several minutes, his oxygen-starved lungs defied him.  Blackness surrounded him.  His last thought was that the Maxwells were going to pay.

*     *     *

Trowa had seen Heero and Wufei being chased towards their rooms and as a result he avidly refused to go in any direction that the Maxwells tried to force him into.  The three chasing him were horrendously fast and he had a feeling that they were only toying with him, that they were much faster.  Knowing he was doomed, he valiantly tried to defy them, even if would only buy himself a few more minutes of safety.  Inevitably, he found himself being pushed back into the recesses of the house and he swore.

A flash of blond was visible just before disappearing into a room, followed by two long chestnut braids.  Seeing Quatre, he decided that they might survive if they managed to group and ran straight at Deut.  Her grin faltered when, instead of attacking her, he leapt over her outstretched hands and ran down the hall after the little blond, three cackling shadows on his heels.  Before he was even aware of any movement behind him, one of his pursuers had cut him off, forcing him into the room with Quatre and the other two braided madmen.  Seeing Quatre already pinned to the floor by one of the smirking menaces, Trowa realized that he was now facing four instead of three and he knew that it had been planned.

Donovan watched Trowa's disbelieving face for several seconds as the silent pilot fought with himself.  Finally, he decided that he couldn't win and allowed Demitri to push him to the ground while Duo, Dustin and Deut watched from the door, amused.  He remained limp and docile while they tied him up.

"You know," Donovan remarked easily, leaning forward to flick Quatre's ears while the blond squirmed and glared at him.  "Even Q-man put up a fight.  You kind of disappointed me."

Trowa shrugged the best he could with his arms tied behind him, staring at Donovan from beneath his dripping bangs.  Fighting had gotten the others thrown in the pond as surely as it had him, but unlike them he had no bruises to show for it.  Demitri looked at him quizzically.

"I think he's saving his strength," Demitri offered.  "Perhaps he thinks he'll be able to escape or fight back later."

"That or he's too much of a coward to take his lumps and go down fighting like a man," Duo retorted.  Trowa glared at him.

"What should we do with them?" Deut asked.  "We never really decided."

"Carnal acts of bestiality?" Dustin suggested.  At this, Quatre turned a nice tomato red and tried to hide his face in the carpet.  Trowa's visible eye widened.

"Who do you think you are?  Darren?" Duo scoffed.  "How about we tar and feather them?"

"No tar, no feathers," Donovan said reasonably.

"Molasses and chocolate sprinkles?" Deut asked, grinning.  "Almost as hard to get out."

"And you wouldn't know that if you hadn't done it to me last month!" Dustin yelled indignantly.

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that," Duo chuckled.

"How could you forget?  You helped her do it!"

Emerald eyes met aquamarine in complete understanding.  Both of the bound pilots knew for sure now.  They were doomed.

"Sorry for interrupting," Donovan said, glaring up at the others from his perch on Quatre's shoulders.  "But in case you've forgotten, we do have captives to deal with."

"Very true," Duo said immediately, pleased to change the subject before Dustin started plotting revenge, again.  He had already glued both of his attackers to their respective beds, but that hadn't seemed to satisfy him.

"I have an idea," Deut seconded, just as eager to distract Dustin.  "Strip them down to their boxers, tie them up back to back and put them in the bathtub."  Trowa banged his head against the floor, wishing he had fought back earlier.  Quatre just whimpered miserably.  "Duo, come with me.  I need some help."

The remaining occupants in the room watched them sprint away curiously, wondering what they had in mind.  Knowing Deut, it was going to make a wretched mess that would take hours, if not days, to clean.  Sure enough, the two missing Maxwells returned within a few minutes, carrying half a kitchen's worth of food and looking very pleased with themselves.  In their short absence, the captive pilots had lost their clothes and had been tied firmly back to back with their arms between them.  Donovan and Dustin were in the process of dragging them to Quatre's master bathroom and lifting them into the tub.  Demitri was trying to help, but he was laughing too hard to be useful.

"So," Donovan called over his shoulder as he fought to get the kicking, thrashing pilots into the large porcelain tub.  "What are you… oh my God."  He had seen what they were carrying.

Every item from the kitchen that was sticky, slimy, smelly, or otherwise gross beyond belief was in their possession.  Quatre, staring at the various containers and jars of every size and color as they were spread out, couldn't hold back a whimper.  Trowa looked physically ill.

Quatre almost blurted out that they wouldn't dare, before catching himself.  That would only egg them on.  No telling what the five grinning lunatics would do if they were riled up.  They didn't even have cause at the moment and the two innocent pilots were still about to end up the world's scariest concoction of… he didn't even want to think about what all they had.  Instead, he kept his voice calm and neutral as he asked two simple questions.

"Is there any way I can talk you out of this?"

"Nope," Dustin replied, studying what his siblings had brought in.

"What if I bribe you?"

"Then we'll throw Dustin in with you," Donovan offered sincerely.  Dustin flung a handful of flour at him.

"Do it and die, geek," Dustin snarled.

Quatre sighed and decided to accept the inevitable.  He had tried.  And failed.  Any further prying would only excite the chattering forms standing over them.  Behind him, he felt Trowa slump against him, defeated.

"May I begin?" Deut asked her brothers.  Nodding happily, they handed her a large can with two holes poked on one end, directly across from each other.  Quatre recognized the enormous can and wished he could somehow disappear.  Molasses.

A thick stream ran across Quatre's immaculate blond hair, plastering it to his head.  The excess ran down his neck and chest.  Deut continued until he was a sticky mess, then moved to do the same to Trowa with the remainder of the can.  Quatre felt the taller boy squirming slightly in disgust.  Once she was out of goop, she moved back.

Duo ran forward next, looking like a little kid on Christmas morning.  In one hand, he held a large can of whipped cream.  He moved over to Trowa, well out of blonde's line of vision.  When the tall brunette gasped and began fighting again in earnest, Quatre grew worried.  He became even more worried when he felt the back of Trowa's neck grow very warm in a deep blush.  He looked up warily to the four watching figures, who were all trying very hard not to laugh.  One of them held a second can of whipped cream in his hand.

Tossing aside the used can, Duo held up his now empty hand.  Immediately, the second can was lobbed at him.  He caught it without looking and smirked evilly at Quatre, who was now as white as Trowa was red.  He didn't even have time to ask what the madman was planning before Duo yanked forward the front of his boxers and filled them to the elastic band with whipped cream.  Quatre's face turned scarlet.

"What was the point of leaving our boxers on if you planned to do that?" he yelped indignantly, turning redder by the second.  He was a deep maroon before he got an answer from the hysterical braided idiots.

"Because Deut's in here," Demitri answered, wiping tears from his eyes.

Quatre ground his teeth and held very still when Duo moved back, giving Demitri access with his two bottles.  In one hand, he held a large bottle of olive oil.  In the other, he held a container of dark chocolate syrup.  He poured half of each of the bottles on the two bound pilots before moving back, inspecting his work with malicious glee.  After a moment of consideration, he moved back in and broke three eggs on each of their heads, working the slimy mess deeply into their already toxic hair.

Knowing that they were already as nasty as they could get, neither of the gooey pilots bothered to move or offer any facial expression when Dustin covered them with containers of garlic powder, sage, black pepper and powdered chicken bullion.  He continued with paprika, oregano, thyme, parsley and powdered onions, making the two filthy hostages smell like a recipe gone horribly wrong.

Some water ran in the nearby sink, followed by the sounds of frantic stirring.  Despite himself, Quatre turned fearfully to see what the last Maxwell was doing.  With an enormous bowl in his hands, he was mixing something with malicious glee, occasionally adding a little more water.  Quatre nearly cried when he realized what it was.  One mixing bowl, some water and a ten-pound bag of flour later, the braided maniac had created a mass of what would turn into thick glue when it dried.  He cringed when it was dribbled over him carefully.  Trowa didn't bother to flinch.  He was too mad to see straight, let alone squirm.

When he was done, he moved out of the way so Deut could administer the finishing touches, upturning a container of cupcake sprinkles on each of their heads.  The little bits of sugar immediately fused to their hair with the help of the drying egg.  As a final insult, each of the five pilots ran forward with a roll of toilet paper and proceeded to mummify them.  Finally finished, they all ran howling from the room.

"Trowa?"

"Yes, Quatre?"

"Remind me to kill G when we get loose."

"Wait in line," Trowa responded grimly.

*     *     *

Heero hung, upside down, from the ceiling, mummified in duct tape from his toes to his neck.  The ends of the tape disappeared into one of the wall vents and wrapped around one of the beams in the ceiling.  While it was comforting to know that he wasn't going to fall flat on his face, it made escaping very difficult.  He had already tried to break the tape by thrashing, but that had only worn him out.  The three braided ogres had used five large rolls of tape.  Each.

Defeated, he hung motionless, occasionally making some sort of muffled noise in hopes that he would be heard.  The lower half of his face had been covered completely by the thick gray tape, destroying any hopes he had of calling for help.  Granted, he knew that the other pilots were busy at the moment protecting their own hides, but he would have liked to have the option.

He grunted and jerked again, feeling the tape shift above him.  Looking up, he saw a small rip in the thick lines securing him to the ceiling.  The blood rushing to his head was making him dizzy and slightly reckless.  Even knowing he was going to fall on his face, he began bucking in earnest.  With a loud hiss that sounded much like ripping cloth, he plummeted to the floor, nearly knocking himself out.

Once on the floor, after waiting for the stars to fade from his vision, Heero discovered he had another problem.  He couldn't open the door to get out of his room.  More than slightly hindered by the thick layers of gray surrounding him, Heero managed to inch towards the door, flopping heavily onto his back once he thought he was close enough.  He pulled his knees as far towards his chest as he could, rocked back a little, then undulated with all the force he could muster, slamming his feet into the door.  The wood shattered around the hinges as the door was forced out of the frame.  Quatre would just have to cope.

Squirming, and looking utterly ridiculous, Heero managed to get back onto his stomach in a position where he could wriggle his way down the hall.  Mimicking the movements of the almighty inchworm, Heero made his way down the lengthy corridor.  Occasionally, he would roll into an open room if he thought he heard footsteps approaching.  Several times, he just barely managed to get out of sight before one of the Maxwells loped by, looking far to pleased with their successful attack.  Deut passed him at least three times.  Once, she even walked into the room where he was hiding, ruffled his hair and wished him luck getting free.  Heero glared at her.

Sighing around the tape, Heero doggedly made his way towards where he believed Quatre and Trowa were being held.  Trowa's room had been empty, so he proceeded to look for the blond.  He didn't dare look for Wufei.  Whatever they were doing to the Chinese pilot, they would be at it for a long time.  He didn't even want to know what they were doing to the raven-haired boy, especially since one of the Maxwells had been carrying something that looked suspiciously like lingerie.

Panting heavily, he slithered into Quatre's room, relieved when he heard the sound of running water from the large adjoining bathroom.  Deciding it was faster to get the blond to come out than it was for him to go in after the small Arabian, Heero grunted loudly.  He was met with silence.  Several moments passed before a wary aquamarine eye peeked into the room to see the cause of the noise.  The two pilots stared at each other in mild shock.

"Well," Quatre said, shaking his head wearily and coming out to help.  "I was wondering what they had done to you."

When the blond got closer, Heero's eyes went wide.  Despite the fact that he had obviously come directly from a bath, the Arabian was covered in various types of ludicrously messy foodstuffs.  Quatre saw his look and shrugged.

"One sided food fight," he offered.  "Trowa's still in the shower.  I was trying to get all of this off in the tub, but it's not working too well."

With a quick snap of his wrist, Quatre pulled the tape off of Heero's face.  The Japanese pilot hissed and winced, wondering how much skin he had just lost.  After opening and closing his jaw a few times, he decided it was still in working order.  He looked up at the still filthy blond with an expression bordering between curiosity, morbid amusement and sympathy.

"What did they dump on you two?" he asked.

Quatre rattled off a list.  After staring open-mouthed for a few seconds, Heero snorted to cover up a snicker.  He wanted to get out of his gray prison and that wouldn't happen if he irritated Quatre too much.  The seemingly innocent blond would leave him there to the mercy of the Maxwells if he was pushed too far.  However, Quatre seemed to recognize the snort for what it was and frowned slightly.

"I wouldn't be to happy if I were you," he said succinctly.  "When this is off, you won't have a single hair on your body."

Heero held still while the smaller pilot tugged at part of the cocoon of tape.  After a moment, Quatre pulled back and frowned.

"What?"

"How much tape did they use?" Quatre asked, looking frankly disbelieving.

"About fifteen rolls."

Quatre made a soft choking noise.  Heero didn't bother to glare at him for laughing.  For now, he only needed to be loosed from his bindings.  He could get even with the blond later.  At that thought, he winced.  He was beginning to think like the spastic braided idiots.  Instead, he tried not to move a single muscle as Quatre proceeded to cut the tape off of him with a large pocketknife.

Grunting, Heero tried to stand up and failed miserably.  The tape had been a little too tight, probably due to his squirming during the wrapping process, and his blood-starved muscles, after receiving the order to move, had told him where to stick it.

When the perfect soldier flopped on the floor with all of the grace of a beached whale, Quatre had the decency to look worried.  He began pulling off the pieces of shredded tape, eyes going wide when he saw the bluish tint to Heero's skin.

"How long have you been wrapped up?"

"Since a few minutes after they started chasing us," Heero answered stiffly.  That had been a little over an hour ago.  He tried to get up again and immediately toppled.  Swearing under his breath, he decided to allow Quatre to finish taking the tape off of him while he rested.

"Do you know what happened to Wufei?" Quatre asked suddenly, pulling off a longish strip on Heero's arm.  Heero winced when most of his arm hair went with it.

"Last I saw, the Maxwells were converging in his room with lingerie," he grunted.  Quatre paused in shock before continuing.

"That would explain the digital camera that one of them had."

"Digital camera?" Heero asked, arching one eyebrow slightly.

"Yes.  And after what you just told me, I'm beginning to think that we got off a lot easier than Wufei did."

To Be Continued…

Finally!  I got another little part of this done.  To be honest, this story was started as a joke.  I never meant to continue it originally, but decided to keep on going when I got so many reviews.  I'll keep going if all of you make me happy.  R&R!

Oh… BTW, I have 500-1000 pages of stuff to read and _memorize_ every night for class, so I'm going to be a bit slow on posting.  Gomen!


	12. Chapter 12

Three days later, they learned what the braided menaces had done.

When Wufei booted up his laptop to check for new missions, he found that his browser homepage had not so mysteriously changed.  A nude girl, maybe sixteen, was posing for all the world to see.  Cursing, he grabbed for a tissue to staunch the flow of blood from his nose, trying to change the page.  He had almost succeeded when recognition hit and all of the blood quickly drained from his face.  His nosebleed dried up instantly.

The girl onscreen was slender, but well built, delicate curves adorning her hips and chest.  Jaw length ebony hair swung free around a smooth, bronzed face, dark eyes peering seductively towards the camera.  A vein in Wufei's forehead bulged dangerously.  He didn't need to look closely to know that the image was computer enhanced.  It was him.

A slow rumbling noise began to echo through the Winner mansion, building in volume until the windows rattled from the sheer force of the furious roar.

"MAXWELL!!!"

Computer forgotten, he raced from the room in search of the braided idiots.  He didn't even care which one he found.  Someone was going to die.  Now.

Charging into one of the many living rooms with all the subtly of a charging bull elephant, he came upon a terrifying sight.  Quatre was curled up on the sofa, bright red and struggling not to laugh.  A crate of Playboy Magazines had been delivered to the house and opened, the individual magazines scattered across the floor.  In front of the crate stood Trowa and Heero, holding up one of the incriminating things for all to see, centerfold hanging down as they laughed hysterically.  Seeing him, they flipped the magazine around so he could see the doctored centerfold of himself in full color glory.

"Hello, Tu LuSu," Heero managed to get out.  Quatre made a choking noise, tears escaping from his clenched eyes as he fought not to laugh.  His face reddened further, igniting his neck with the rosy color as he struggled valiantly.

"Would you like me to prepare your dark chocolate body paint?" Trowa asked, glittering emerald eyes flickering over one of the side articles.  Quatre finally lost it, exploding into laughter on the sofa.

"Would you like two men today or three?" the blond choked out between sidesplitting laughter.  "A proud Amazon warrior like yourself would be insulted by any less."  With that, all three pilots broke down into wild, uncontrollable laughter.

It started somewhere a mile below the mansion, gaining in magnitude and power until it erupted at a single focal point, shaking the earth for miles around from the sheer thundering force.

**"MAXWELL!!!"**

The three pilots scattered across the room laughed harder despite their current deafened states.  After a few seconds, Heero managed to compose himself enough to call out to the fuming Chinese pilot as he stormed from the room.

"You won't find them," he gasped.  Tendons stood out on his neck as he tried to remain calm long enough to convey his message.  "They left the moment this arrived."

Wufei swore in Chinese and stalked off.  They couldn't hide from him forever.

*     *     *

On the other side of the world in Egypt, Treize and Zechs were staring at the centerfold in the latest issue of Playboy in utter shock.

"Isn't that…" Treize began.

"Zero Five?" Zechs finished.

The two exchanged a knowing look.

"He pissed of one of the Maxwells, didn't he?"

"Obviously."

*     *     *

Carefully hiding in a safehouse far, far away from the pissed Chinese pilot, were ten braided maniacs, all of which were still laughing at the images they were seeing on the cameras they had hidden in the mansion.  Their ears were still ringing from Wufei's last roar of fury.

"If he doesn't lower his blood pressure soon, his head will explode," Donovan ground out, tears seeping from his eyes.

"He needs less stress in his life," Dustin agreed.

"When do you think he'll eventually calm down?" Deut asked, still shaking.

"In a few days."

"Few weeks."

"Maybe in a couple of years."

"Never."

Laughter rang through the small safehouse yet again.  Wufei had set about dragging the stacks of Playboys outside to burn.  One of his eyes was twitching so badly it appeared like he was about to have a seizure.  Or was already in the midst of one.  He was so upset that he didn't notice that each of the other pilots grabbed a magazine to hide so they could tease him later.  Not that it would have mattered had he noticed.  After all, the Maxwells had some copies of their own.

"So, what do we do in the meantime?" Duo drawled, thoroughly enjoying the show.  Wufei was turning redder with each passing second.  Duo was silently wondering if the vein on the Chinese pilot's forehead was going to explode.  He wasn't the only one.

"I guess teasing Wufei is out of the question at the moment," Dustin provided.

"Well, duh," Deut laughed.

"Teasing Oz is still okay, right?" Derrick asked, an unholy gleam entering his violet eyes.

"Of course," Donovan answered.  "I mean, what else are they good for?"

"Hot, dripping monkey love?" Darren supplied.

"Or not," David muttered, eyeing his brother warily.

"We let him in the safehouse why?" Daniel groused.

"Um… he'll be a good source of protein if we're starving to death?" Deut suggested.

"He's a good source of protein no matter what," Derrick leered, defending his lover.

"I don't think I needed to hear that," Duo whimpered.

"My poor innocent mind," Dustin seconded.  "Oh, the pain.  The pain."

"He's corrupting us!" Duo pouted, pointing at the smirking pyromaniac.

"Who's corrupting who?" Derrick protested.  "I don't recall you ever being innocent."

"Innocent is a relative term," Donovan mused, lips quirking upwards into a smile.

"And no one related to us qualifies," Deut said, looking quite serious.  There was a small pause while the other Maxwells considered her statement.  Naturally, it didn't take them long to concede the point.

"You know," Darren said, face straight, "there's nothing saying that we can't tease Wufei and Oz at the same time."

"Oh no," Dante breathed.  His eyes widened almost comically.  He did, however, have a good point for panicking.  No one in their right mind trusted Darren when he had that look of innocence on his face.  "Two things.  One, what are you planning?  And two, don't even think it!"

Grinning widely, Darren quickly outlined what he had in mind, oblivious to the looks of absolute horror thrown in his direction.  Amid the mortified faces were glimmers of amusement.  The moment he was done, the argument began.

"No!" David said firmly, scowling.

"But…" Darren said, starting his protest only to be cut off.

"It's demeaning to use Deathscythe in such a fashion!" Daniel seconded.

"Can't we…" he tried again.

"Denied!" Dante hissed.

"Let's vote on it!" Darren said in a rush, afraid of being interrupted again.

Dante scowled darkly, but nodded.  Most of their disputes were settled this way.  Votes almost always highly favored one side of the argument.  If the vote was tied, then the strongest advocate for each side would step forward and the two would proceed to wale on each other until an agreement was reached.  Thus was the way of the braided bakas.

"Fine," Dante spat.  "All in favor?"

As expected, Darren's hand was immediately in the air, followed quickly by both Duo's and Dustin's.  A moment later, and a scowl from his lover, Derrick's hand was raised.  The six remaining Maxwells stared at each other, a contest of wills rising as the seconds ticked slowly by waiting for just one more person to raise their hand.

For the mere sake of chaos, as well as driving Dante batty, Deut flipped her hand into the air at the exact moment that Donovan did, and for the same reason.  For his part, Dante only let out a pained sound and allowed his head to thump against the table with a resounding thud.  David and Daniel immediately began to let the world know of their extensive, and creative, vocabularies while Demitri settled for blushing darkly at what he would have to do.

"Come on," Darren said, drawing three lethal glares from his formerly protesting brothers.  "Think about it!  Heero is going to throw a fit!  And I'll bet you anything that Wufei is going to nosebleed for sure!"

That seemed to settle it.  The three scowls melted immediately.  Ten evil smirks rounded the discussion table.

*     *     *

"You know," Dante said dryly, "Quatre could easily secure us as many mobile suits as we need."

"I'm fully aware of that," Darren said, not even bothering to turn at look at him.  "But this way is more fun."

"What I'd like to know is why here?" Duo pondered.

"Because Treize is here," Darren responded with a smirk.

"What is this perverse fascination you have with torturing Treize?" Dustin laughed.

Darren paused and thought a moment before answering.  "What else are we supposed to do with him?"

True to Maxwell form, they tortured the Oz leader just as doggedly as they did their Chinese friend, much to both men's frustration.  Well, frustration wasn't quite the word.  Hair-pulling, eye-twitching, vein-bulging, foaming-at-the-mouth, call-a-shrink-because-someone's-going-to-need-him, get-an-ambulance-here-immediately, fits of insanity came a little closer.

"You know," Deut drawled.  "We don't have to stick strictly to business.  We could have a little fun while we're here."

A myriad of snorts and poorly muffled chuckles met her suggestion.  The evil smirks returned.

*     *     *

Treize wanted nothing more than to beat his head against the nearest wall and scream.  Even in Cairo, Egypt, the braided menaces found him.  He just knew they were following him.  A brief thought flashed through his mind and he seriously wondered if their mission was to make him resign.  Or have him committed to a mental institution.

The underground levels of the base had been filled with the base's water supply to create the world's biggest indoor swimming pool.  Full of piranhas.  His room had been filled to the ceiling with shaving cream.  All of the photocopiers had piles upon piles of copies next to them, all of the same set of butt cheeks.  'It's a Small World After All' was playing on a loop.  Not the full song.  Just those six words.  Those same seven notes.  Again and again.

Treize was so upset that he didn't bother to respond when four braided lunatics ran by in the middle of a water balloon fight.  He didn't even flinch when a balloon was slipped into the front of his shirt and then smacked by a dexterous hand.  His lack of response caused all four of the menaces to circle back to him and look at each other in confusion for a few seconds.  Shrugging, they decided to pelt him with their entire supply of balloons.  Once he was thoroughly wet, they scampered off to play elsewhere.

A sharp cracking noise echoed through the hall and despite himself, Treize looked up towards the source of the noise.  He was in time to see a door crashing open.  Out of said door ran a mortified blond, naked except for a few choice leather garments and a set of silk lined handcuffs.  Treize stared in shock as a slender braided figure clad in tight black leather and wielding a whip jumped out into the hall after him.

"Get back here!" he roared.  Zechs ran faster.

To Be Continued…

Okay.  I know it was short, but have pity!  I'm supposed to be studying for the mother of all tests right now.  I did this on one of my study breaks.  R&R!  Also, please be patient with my posting time.  Each class in medical school is equivalent to 50 hours of senior level courses in undergrad.  I still can't believe how much reading there is!  o_o

For those of you protesting that the Maxwells couldn't overpower Heero, they can.  I swear I'll explain why it's possible later.  Please believe me!  I'm not just doing that for the sake of jollies!  I swear there's a reason!  ;_;

Note:  Soon, I'll be posting another GW story called Afterimages.  Has absolutely nothing to do with this story, but I worked really hard on it!  It's dark, violent and completely serious, but please check it out.  Be prepared for mass amounts of Duo abuse.  Oh, and R&R on that one too.  ^_^;

If you prefer comedy, and not the serious junk, then watch for a Choose Your Own Adventure I'll have ready soon.  You get to choose what Duo does, determining whether he lives or dies.  When you see 'Pick Your Own Stupidity' come out, feel free to go poke at that one.  I swear it's amusing.  For once, you'll actually get to see first hand how hard it is to be Duo.  @_@


	13. Chapter 13

"Mobile suits?"

"Check."

"Treize's schedule?"

"Check."

"Schematics of the New York base?"

"Check."

"Mission orders hacked?"

"Check."

"Loudspeakers installed?"

"Check."

"Industrial size strap-on's?"

"Che… Wait!  Who the hell let you out?"

"Easter bunny?"

"Damn it!  Put him back in the closet!"

"But I don't wanna go!"

"Got him!"

"I've got the rope."

"Be sure to gag him."

"What did I…  Mmh!  Mmmm mff!"

"Finally."

"It's bad enough that I have to go along with this.  I don't want to listen to him too."

"Hey.  In all fairness, you were outvoted."

"Take his side and you'll be in the closet with him."

"No.  That's quite alright."

"Can I go in the closet?"

"No!"

"You guys are no fun."

"Quiet or I'll gift wrap you and send you to Wufei."

"I'll be good."

"Same here."

"Ditto."

"About time.  Now, back to the list."

"Choreography?"

"Check."

*     *     *

Heero was typing quickly, trying to get past the security on the files he was after.  He'd uncovered something called the Shinigami Project and he fully intended on getting the details.  Four hours had passed since he had started hacking and nothing had changed.  Whoever had set the security on the files had been a computer genius.  Growling, he kept at it.  He'd have answers if it killed him.

A small window popped up in the corner of his screen.  He glanced at it for a moment, fully intending on closing the annoying screen when he noticed what it was.  Frowning, he clicked on the small link marked 'Mission' and proceeded to enter his incredibly long and impossible to remember alphanumeric passwords.

He glanced at information briefly, noting that the file had already been accessed once.  The Maxwells already knew about the mission.  Sending his acceptance, he shut down the program and initiated a new one to continue work on getting the files he wanted.  Finished, he started searching for the other pilots.  The base was a large one and all of the pilots were ordered to attack.

*     *     *

Treize fidgeted madly, trying to keep his nerves under control.  He was on one of the largest Oz bases on Earth and he knew without a doubt that the Maxwells were coming.  He shuddered, wondering what horrors he would be subjected to this time.

Something that disturbed him even more, though, was the fact that a team of hackers he had hired had discovered a link to the information on the spastic L2 pilots.  Something called the Shinigami Project had been uncovered, but no one could seem to get any details past that.  Considering the fact that the Maxwells called themselves Shinigami at times, he was understandably worried.  What could be so important that over a hundred hackers couldn't access it?

He picked up a sheet of paper on his desk, glaring at it as though it held the answers.  Not even an hour ago, one of the best hackers in the group had located a subdivision of the Shinigami Project.  Honoo.

"Fire," he muttered.  "What in the hell does 'fire' mean?"

Suddenly grim, he turned to stare out the window again, wondering what was coming this time.

*     *     *

Heero glanced at the nine mobile suits following Deathscythe.  The fact that all of the Maxwells were joining in the destruction of the base didn't bother him.  But the suits did.  The insane pilots had painted the mobile suits with some sort of design.  He didn't know if the murals had significance or not, but they made him uneasy.

One of the suits was painted to look like it was on fire.  A second had dappled grays and blacks covering it, carefully depicting a forest at night, emphasizing the shadows.  The third had a large spotted cat on it that he suspected was a leopard.  He made a mental note to ask Trowa later.  The fourth was similar, a snarling wolf curled across the machine.  A fifth had a mountain range on it.  The sixth, a tidal wave.  The seventh sported a tornado that wrapped around the machine twice.  The eighth was black streaked with silver bolts of lightening.  It was the ninth and final one that worried him.  The first eight displayed something found in nature.  The final machine depicted a nuclear explosion.

Choosing to ignore the designs for now, he hailed Deathscythe.

"Duo here.  What does the almighty Spandex God request of me?"

"Baka," he snapped.  "You never sent details as to what formation you would take."

"Don't worry about it," Duo said, waving one hand dismissingly.  "We're big boys.  We can take care of ourselves."

"I'm not a boy," Deut snapped, a second window appearing on Heero's screen.  Before Duo could respond, a third window appeared with a grinning face.

"Compared to Duo, you are," he offered.  Deut scowled.

"Darren," Duo growled in warning.  Darren just laughed and flipped off the signal, disappearing before any more could be said.

Heero was ignoring their conversation.  He was busy tracing the signals back to the two mobile suits that had opened a frequency towards him.  Deut was in the suit with the tsunami and Darren in the one with the tornado.  He briefly considered questioning the two remaining Maxwells, who were currently bickering like children, on how they had known what the others were saying.  Snorting, he dismissed it from his mind, assuming they had another set of visual or audio feeds between them.

Though he would have liked to have figured out the names of the other seven Maxwells, he didn't get the chance to ask.  Quatre's face popped up on a new window.

"Trowa, Wufei and I are in position," the blond said immediately.  "Do you happen to know what the Maxwells will be doing?  I'm afraid to hail them again.  The last time I did, they responded with four moons and… one of them pretending to hump the screen."  By the time he had said that, he was a lovely tomato red.  "Wufei said they did much worse to him, but he wouldn't elaborate."

Heero suddenly felt relieved that he only had to listen to two of the braided idiots bickering for a few minutes.  He'd already disconnected the signals to get rid of the argument.  Glancing once more at the designed mobile suits, he turned to the Arabian.

"They're avoiding answering," he responded stiffly.  Cobalt eyes narrowed.  "They're up to something."

"I thought so," Quatre muttered.  He opened his mouth to say more but was interrupted by a window popping up in both his and Heero's Gundams.

"You always assume the worst of us!" one of the Maxwells wailed, clutching at his heart.  "It's not fair.  We haven't done anything!"

"You're planning something," Heero stated, glaring.

"You can't prove that."

"Who are you?" Quatre asked, interrupting before Heero and the American could get into a serious fight.

"Eh?"

"You're name, baka," Heero snapped, interested in the reply.  He was already tracing the source of the transmission.  "Which one are you?"

"Dustin."

Heero glanced at the information on screen.  The shadowy mobile suit.  Immediately after he had that information, Dustin's screen vanished and another popped into view.

"If you want to talk to us during battle, you don't have to find out our names," came a cold voice.  "Just call us by the designs on what we're piloting.  We'll respond."

"You are?" Quatre asked politely.

"Dante," he snapped.  "And before you bother tracing me, Heero, I'm in the lightening streaked mobile suit."  The screen disappeared.

Heero involuntarily twitched.  He didn't want to admit it, but they were creeping him out.  Clenching his teeth, he decided that they must have bugged his Gundam.  Another screen came into view, shocking both him and Quatre.

"No, Heero.  We didn't bug your precious Wing," he laughed.  The screen disappeared immediately.  Heero's blood ran cold.

He was in the process of tracing the last signal when all of the sensors on his Gundam lit up.  Cursing his inattention, he grabbed the controls, preparing for battle.  What he saw, though, was Deathscythe and the nine painted mobile suits flying towards the base at a rapid speed.

_So much for planning,_ Heero groused.  Yanking on the controls, he threw himself behind the ten attacking idiots.

"Quatre, bring everyone else in.  They're attacking."

The signal from the blond disappeared instantly as he left to do as ordered.  In a matter of a few seconds, the other three Gundams were following him.  The four Gundams stayed close to each other, each of the pilots wondering the same thing.  What were the Maxwells planning this time?

Their question was answered immediately when the ten braided lunatics immediately engaged in battle with the mobile suits at the base in their own unique way.  Even Heero, the perfect soldier, froze when he saw what the ten Americans were doing.  From some incoming signal he didn't remember opening, he saw Wufei fumbling for something to quell a rather heavy nosebleed.  Heero couldn't blame him.

In perfect synchronization, the ten pilots had arranged themselves into a position that was both offensive and defensive.  However, their formation was unprecedented, the nine mobile suits and one Gundam lining up side by side as they fought, Deathscythe in the middle.  That wouldn't have bothered the other four Gundam pilots had it not been for the fact that the braided Americans were somehow managing to do the cancan in their appropriated mobile suits while still effectively fighting.  Loudspeakers that they hadn't noticed before were blaring an energetic tune that they seemed to be dancing to.

"I am not seeing this," Quatre muttered over the audio connection.  Somewhere in the background, a muffled giggle could be heard, sounding suspiciously like Trowa.

As if they had heard the soft words, the Maxwells changed formation, splitting into small clusters as they scattered into the attacking mobile suits.  Thinking it was over, Heero started to follow them, only to pull up short in mixture of amusement and horror.  He could feel blood rushing to his cheeks in a fierce blush.  The music shifted to some sort of techno music that would have done well at a rave.  In the background, he could hear Wufei going insane.  The Chinese pilot was screaming something about 'scurvy dogs' at the Maxwells.  Beyond the ear-splitting ranting, he could hear Quatre sputtering indignantly, his blush evident in his voice.  Trowa could be heard as well, hiccupping occasionally as he tried to control his laughter.  Wufei began ranting at the Heavyarms pilot instead, lecturing him on the foolishness of encouraging the harebrained imbeciles.

Heero chose to ignore the other three pilots in favor of watching the unfolding stupidity.  Despite the fact that the Americans had put themselves in less than perfect positions, the tactics they were using seemed to be working flawlessly, the opposing pilots too flabbergasted to do anything to counter them.  He couldn't blame them either.

The Maxwells had clustered into groups, each of which was doing something different.  In groups of two, they were dirty dancing with the mobile suits they had stolen, making the machines gyrate in motions never meant for the heavy metal contraptions to move in.  Two others had abandoned the pretense of dancing, opting to slam the machines together in a motion that had Heero blushing from the implications.  He knew that Darren was in the one with the tornado on it, but he hadn't yet identified the Maxwell in the flame-covered suit.  Even in such ridiculous positions, more or less tangled with another suit, all of them were easily dodging all attacks aimed at them and returned fire with unfailing accuracy.  The four groups were quickly decimating the stunned Oz pilots.

Blinking, he did a quick tally, frowning slightly when he realized that Deathscythe and the shadowy mobile suit were both missing.  Assuming the worst, he flipped on his scanners and located the two errant suits.  He swore when his sensors registered Tallgeese in the same area as the two missing Maxwells.  What he found nearly caused him to crash Wing Zero face first into the dirt.

Between the two of them, Duo and Dustin had somehow managed to flatten Tallgeese to the ground, where they were using Deathscythe to pound the struggling suit into the dirt.  Dustin's appropriated mobile suit was hard pressed to hold Tallgeese to the ground while they continued to torment the blond pilot within.

Heero's com beeped.  Shocked, he saw that the signal was coming from Tallgeese.  Hesitantly, he accepted the feed and allowed a window to pop up to show a very irritated, Zechs, who seemed to be doing his best impression of a lobster.

"What?" Heero asked coldly.  Inside, he was laughing himself sick at the older man's furious expression, which was currently jerking in a rhythmic motion along with his pinned Gundam.  Zechs glared, turning redder by the second.

"Get them off of me," he grated.  Heero couldn't help it.  His lips twitched upwards in something resembling a grin.

"Why should I?"

"What do I have to do to convince you to get the Maxwells away from me?"

"Surrender the base," Heero retorted immediately.  The window vanished immediately, leaving him blinking at the empty screen.  A few seconds later, his com beeped again.  Curious, he accepted the signal a second time.

"If we surrender the base, will you let all personnel evacuate first?"

Heero froze, shocked that he was even discussing this.  Keeping his face neutral, he nodded tersely in agreement.  The request was reasonable.

"Agreed."

"And will you get these idiots off of me?" he grated out.

"Done," Heero said, closing the connection.

Attempting to hail Deathscythe proved to be useless.  Duo was laughing too hard to hold on to the controls properly, let alone speak.  He didn't need to check to know that Dustin would be in a similar state.  Sighing, Heero moved forward warily, prying Deathscythe off of the Tallgeese to allow Zechs to get off of the ground.  Immediately, the freed Gundam spun and escaped, flying away from the base.  The formerly attacking Maxwells didn't move, still laughing too hard to pilot.

Heero quickly called up a link to all of the other pilots.

"Stand back and hold your fire," he called.  Several curious looks and numerous bursts of mad laughter met his announcement.  "Oz has surrendered the base on the condition that we allow them to evacuate."

"They surrendered?" Wufei asked, looking shocked.  Heero absently noticed that the Chinese pilot was still nosebleeding.

"Hey!  Where's the fun in that?" a braided figure asked.

"We were winning either way, Derrick," a second Maxwell retorted stiffly.  Heero stared at him, recognizing Dante immediately from the same cold tone he had used earlier.  After all, how many of the Maxwells could possibly act like Heero did?

"You just get embarrassed too easily," Deut interrupted.  "You should really remove the stick from your ass, you know.  You could almost challenge Wu-chan with that thing."  Wufei could be heard sputtering in the background.

"Stick?  Ass?  What did I miss?" Darren wailed.

"Darren," Dante growled.

All of the Maxwells pulled out of the group windows to argue amongst themselves.  Heero stared at his empty screen in horror, having suddenly realized that now that the battle was over, they would all likely be coming back to stay at one of Quatre's mansions with the rest of them.

As promised, all Oz troops pulled back, leaving their mobile suits where they stood on the field as they left quickly.  The Maxwells had pulled back, but continued to play amongst themselves.  Five of them were dancing the Macarena with their mobile suits.  After a few seconds, Duo joined in with Deathscythe.  The remaining four American pilots managed to secure two lengths of cable from somewhere and were having a Double Dutch Jump Rope competition.  The hopping of the multi-ton machines was making the ground shake and drawing a lot of attention from the evacuating soldiers.

"Just when I think they can't get any dumber," Wufei muttered.  Heero nodded silently in agreement.

Within an hour, the personnel had been removed from the base.  The pilots all converged to destroy the emptied buildings and abandoned suits.  The Maxwells did their part by forming a line and doing the Bunny Hop across the buildings to demolish them.  Knowing better than to distract them, Heero just shook his head silently, not wanting to draw their attention.

Once they were finished, the Maxwells immediately disappeared, going back to wherever it was they had come from.  The remaining four pilots watched them leave with extreme relief, not wanting to face the ten menaces yet.  Quatre led the way back to the hanger where they stored their Gundams.

*     *     *

Treize glanced over his shoulder at the smoke rising from the smoldering remains of the New York base.  Even though they were miles away, the smoke could still be seen clouding the air.

After driving for a short while, they came to a smaller branch of the base.  Treize wasted no time in going to his office, allowing the soldiers to do what they wanted for the meantime.  Checking the computer there, he froze.

A message waited for him in his email.  He cautiously opened the link, eyes widening when he saw what was on the page.  One of the hackers had managed to get past all of the security on the Shinigami Project.  He recoiled from the screen when the first picture came up, feeling like his blood had been replaced with ice water.

"My God," he breathed.

*     *     *

In high spirits from not having been forced to fight a battle he thought would be difficult, if not impossible, Heero walked quickly back to his room.  Not one to be deterred in anything, he opened his laptop, checking on the program he had set to hack the files on the Shinigami Project.  To his surprise, the files were accessible, his program having accomplished in the past few hours what he had been unable to.

Smirking to himself, he pulled up the decoded files.  The blood drained from his face as images and information started flickering across the screen.  For the first time in his life, Heero Yuy was afraid.

To Be Continued…

Yes, I am a sadist.  The next section will be serious, I'm afraid.  No humor for that bit.  But it will explain a lot of things I've been hinting at.  R&R!

I'm having problems with Pick Your Own Stupidity, so it'll be delayed for a while.  Sorry.  Afterimages is out now, so go check it out.  Be warned, that one is extremely dark and violent, so no squeamish people.

Well, ff.net took down the author name myself and a few friends were posting under, so I'm starting again here.  Since I've had to repost _everything_, REVIEW!  I lost my reviews!  *sobs*  I was over 200!!!  *wails like a banshee gone mad*


	14. Chapter 14

Clenching his jaw and struggling to keep from hyperventilating, Heero ran down the stairs, laptop tucked under his arm.  His horrified expression drew the other pilots' attention immediately.  Within the span of a minute, he had the other three gathered around him as he plugged in the laptop and brought the information he had learned onto the screen.  The four Gundam pilots watched in utter silence as information flickered across the screen and short video clips started playing.

*     *     *

Several hundred men in white lab coats wandered through endless rows of fluid filled columns, each containing almost thirty gallons of clear fluid.  Computers rested at the base of every glass tube, data scrolling across the screens rapidly.  Within the liquid, a single tiny form was present in each column, the largest of which was barely three inches long.  Tiny hearts could be seen beating through translucent skin.

One of the computers began beeping loudly.  The nearest doctor walked up to it calmly and glanced over the data on screen.  Reflexively, he glanced at the tiny figure in the glass column, frowning when he saw the tiny heart slow and stop.  Shaking his head, he typed in a command.  The synthetic embryonic fluid began to drain from the clear tube.  He typed another phrase into the computer before moving on.

Number 714:  Failed.  Experiment exterminated.

Not even slightly remorseful at his actions, he walked up to the next column and adjusted the chemical balances in the embryonic fluid.

*     *     *

Doctors swarmed the nursery, checking on infants that did not cry, even at only a few days old.  Intense violet eyes followed the white-coated men as they circulated between the cribs, administering injections.

One infant, a tiny boy, small compared to the rest of the children, let out a tiny whimper, causing the doctor to pause and peer at him closely.  Grunting sourly, he decided to let it pass this time.  Marking the number down, he made a note to keep an eye on the child.  They didn't need any crybabies.

In a foul mood that one of the children was already lagging behind, he moved to the next crib, intentionally being overly rough with the child.  The boy didn't utter a sound, staring at him impassively the entire time with cold, calculating violet eyes.  Nodding in satisfaction, he continued with his rounds.

*     *     *

Of the original fifteen hundred, only twelve hundred forty seven remained.

Officers walked slowly back and forth in front of the groups they had been assigned.  Each division had been assigned one hundred twenty five children from the original subjects, except for Chikara and Terekineshisu.  Chikara had been given twice that.  Terekineshisu had been assigned everything that remained, giving that particular program three hundred and seventy five of the original subjects.  From the strange occurrences among the Terekineshisu division, the program had been renamed to 'Terekineshisu to Terepashii'.  Despite the original numbers, not a single one of the projects had all of the subjects they had been engineering for each branch.  Every program had lost several of the violet-eyed children during the early stages.  And they were still being lost.

One of the generals in charge of the Mizu division spun to glare at the faces staring impassively back at him.  Roughly one in every six was female.  All of the subjects, whether they be male or female, were dressed in pale beige uniforms.  Each of the four-year-olds was standing perfectly straight, hands at their sides and faces impassive.  The boys had their hair cropped very short.  The girls had their hair just barely long enough to pull into a tight ponytail, the shining chestnut hair ending less than an inch below the hair bands.

Every group was frighteningly similar.  Every specimen standing at perfect attention, obeying every order and gesture, learning at a pace that no normal human could ever match.  And every last one of them was identical.

As a perfectly organized unit, they fell into a perfect line, presenting their arms as a doctor passed with a syringe.  The middle-aged man administering injections paused when he saw one of the girls breathing heavily through clenched teeth.  He gave her the shot, watching impassively as she convulsed and sank to her knees, clutching at her head in clear agony.  Without pause, the doctor pulled a revolver out of his pocket and put a bullet through her skull.  She collapsed to the ground, her tiny frame going limp.  The doctor glanced around, noting the expressions of the other subjects.  One of the nearby boys seemed upset.  Glaring angrily, he backhanded the youth for his display of emotions before he continued down the line, dispensing injections like he had for the last five years.  At the end of the line, he pulled out a clipboard and scribbled a quick note.

Number 132:  Failed.  Experiment exterminated.

"Number two-seventeen displayed emotions," he snapped.  "Half rations for all of you for the next week.  From now on, try to keep him in order."

The remaining group filed into the main building to go to their diminished lunches.  The doctors remaining on the grounds circled around the corpse of the deceased girl, intent on learning why she had failed.

*     *     *

Ninety-seven five-year-olds stood in perfect formation, staring stonily forward as several dozen generals dressed in immaculate uniforms circulated among them.  The doctor in charge of the Honoo division stood at the front of the room, watching for the slightest slip in position or expression.  When he was finally satisfied that the children were performing flawlessly, he grunted and glanced at the chart in his hands, snapping out a quick order.

"Number eighty-six, come forward."

The named child moved forward automatically, stopping in front of the glaring man in his white coat.  He continued to stare straight ahead, not making eye contact.  The doctor pointed to the side, indicating a large block of metal.

"That is Gundanium, eighty-six.  Destroy it."

The child spun on one heel to face the one-ton block of metal.  His little face tightened in concentration.  White-hot flames sprang up around the slab of Gundanium, melting the edges of the metal.  After several minutes, he slumped forward, hands resting heavily on his knees as he panted for breath.  The block of metal was almost completely intact.  The doctor scowled.

"Go back to your place," he snapped, writing something on the charts he held.  The boy moved back to his position, managing to stand perfectly straight even though he was breathing heavily through clenched teeth.  The doctor glared at the group.  "If none of you can melt the block, you're all on half rations for the next month."  He paused, looking around the grave children.  So far, none of them had managed to do serious damage to the Gundanium, despite the constant threats and punishments.  His eyes narrowed.  "So be it."

Before he could write anything else in the charts, a solitary voice spoke up, shattering the silence.  The sheer audacity of the child to speak caused the doctor to stiffen in fury.

"Sir."

"Yes, fourteen?" he snapped.  The boy looked up, meeting his gaze.  One of the nearby generals growled, hand shifting towards his gun.  The children had been instructed specifically against meeting their eyes for any reason.  This one was trouble.

"I would like to try, sir."

"Would you?" the doctor sneered.  He flipped a few pages back in the charts, staring at the notes on the small subject speaking to him.  The numbers were slightly above average, but were nothing phenomenal.  He snorted at the impudence of the child, but at the same time, he waved him towards the block of nearly indestructible metal.

Undaunted by the harsh looks or the gun now trained on his head, he walked forward away from his siblings, stopping a good distance from the block of Gundanium.  He didn't hesitate before raising one arm towards the singed metal.  Glares were directed at him from every general in the room.  He had broken form by moving his arm.  Still ignoring the looks he was getting, he grunted slightly with effort.

Delicate lavender flames licked his hand, testimony to the inhuman powers that had been infused into his slender frame.  The same amethyst flames rose around the large block of metal, dancing around the shimmering metal harmlessly for a moment.  The boy's face contorted with effort.  In response, the flames leapt to a blinding inferno, engulfing the metal in the blaze.  Molten Gundanium spread across the floor in white-hot rivers.  A moment later, the violet flames died out, the intense light fading to show a winded child standing a few paces from a white-faced general, gun still clutched tightly in his hand.

"To your place," the doctor said weakly, eyes wide.  He made a quick note on the charts.  The boy had been holding back.

The boy nodded, spinning sharply on one heel to start back to where he was told to go.  He faltered mid-step, violet eyes growing wide and vacant.  As one, all ninety-seven faces whipped to the side to face the east wall.  The uniformed men moved back in shock at the unity of the movement, fighting the urge to run.  A moment later, they realized that they should have followed their instincts.

Ninety-seven shrieks rose unanimously into the silence.  Heads fell backwards as the screams grew in volume, violet eyes vacant.  Flames whipped around the tiny figures, rising into the air in a deadly flash of light.  A violet sphere began to form around the solitary figure in front of the group, expanding outwards uncontrollably.  The generals collapsed into ash before they were able to take two steps.  The amethyst sphere flashed outwards, incinerating ninety-six screaming forms in the deadly blaze.

In the middle of the flames stood a single figure, unharmed by the flames.  He remained motionless, head thrown back as he howled his fury to the heavens.

*     *     *

The same doctor that had shot the four-year-old girl a year ago circled the ranks of the Mizu division yet again.  The children, now five, stared back at him as blankly as ever.  He nodded in satisfaction before waving them towards the beach one at a time while several generals watched avidly from a safe distance.

"One eighty, forward."

One girl in particular had everyone's attention.  Her readouts were phenomenal.  At the request of one of the observing generals, he had waved her forward to demonstrate her abilities.  The ocean beyond her roiled violently, the waves rising hundreds of feet into the air before crashing back to the waters below.  One wave rose higher than the others, thinning into an aquatic whip that descended harshly on the beach far away from all of the observers and other children.  A small rift in the earth was formed from the impact, easily fifty feet deep.

The generals murmured among themselves.  Pleased at her results, the doctor waved her back to her place and motioned for another child to come forward.  The boy struggled to force the waves to the same heights as the girl before him, but was unable to manage the same feat.  He was preparing to form a smaller version of the whip when the waters fell out of his control.

"One forty-two, what are you doing?" the doctor demanded, glaring at the slack expression on the boy's face.  "Continue with the exercise."

The boy didn't seem to hear him, his blank gaze unchanging.  Before the doctor could yell at him again, a general tapped him on the shoulder, looking very worried.

"What's wrong with them?" he hissed, eyes wide.

"Them?" the doctor repeated in confusion.  He turned back to look at the remainder of the Mizu division.  A sea of dazed expressions met his gaze for an instant only.  A mere second later, every child pivoted to stare behind them.

The girl that had been on display only minutes ago suddenly howled, her voice raising in volume in pitch until it had an inhuman quality to it.  The others followed only a heartbeat behind her, their cries joining hers as they screamed to the clear skies.  Their voices were drowned out by the roaring of the ocean at their backs.

The doctor and generals turned to face the ocean just as it overcame them, responding to the cries of the small children.  The water pulled at them viciously.  The last thing the doctor saw was the girl prodigy amid the roiling waters, the only one among the children untouched by the deadly surge of the tide.  The last thing he ever heard was her animalistic shriek.

*     *     *

A small group of doctors and generals stood near a mountain range, watching the Daichi division at work.  Testament to the power in the slight bodies, the mountains surged in height, pushing towards the sky.  Only a few hours ago, there had been no mountain range at all.

One at a time, the five-year-olds moved forward, alternately creating or destroying a mountain within the range.  Several managed to call forth magma and trail it around for several minutes before exhausting themselves.  Looking extremely bored, one of the boys just stared idly at the entire mountain range on his turn.  Before the doctors or generals could say anything, he exhaled sharply, eyes flashing with concentration.

In an instant, the earth was flat as far as the eye could see.

"Three… three twelve, back to your position," one of the doctors stammered, eyes absolutely huge.

The doctor made a quick note on the boy's charts, reviewing past information.  Physically, he was of average strength of the experimental children, but he was horribly slow.  His running speed was among the slowest of all of the subjects, barely higher than that of a normal child.  He stared hard at the listed IQ, his eyes flickering up to the child before returning to the sheet.  It was over four hundred.  Adding that to the demonstration he had just seen, he came to an immediate conclusion.

The child was dangerous.

He made a quick note below the number.

Number 312:  Potentially dangerous.  Experiment to be exterminated immediately.

Tomorrow's injection would end the threat.  While the increased power in the child could be used to their advantage, they couldn't take the risk of one of the subjects being that intelligent.  It was simply asking for trouble to allow him to live.

When the doctor looked up, he saw the subject in question staring at him with a slightly amused expression.  He fought the urge to draw his gun and end the threat immediately.  The boy knew.  With his intelligence and power, he would also be prepared to counter anything thrown at him.  They had to be careful with his extermination.

His thoughts on the child's destruction ended abruptly.  Every one of the subjects had spun to face the main compound to the south, their expressions identical.  Blank.  Only the prodigy slated for termination deviated from the group.  He was kneeling on the ground and clutching his skull, panting in obvious strain.  Slowly, he lost whatever battle he had been fighting, his head pivoting to face the same direction as all of the others.

Screams rose from the previously immaculate ranks as they collapsed to their knees, the earth bucking below them.  A howl rose into the air from the prodigy, so primal that it drew the attention of all of the supervising doctors and generals.  They could only watch helplessly as a shockwave emanated from the boy, shooting outwards at a phenomenal speed as it drew the earth into an enormous roiling mass.

All of the generals and the majority of the doctors attempted to run.  Only two men in white coats stayed behind, watching their deaths approach and knowing that it would be impossible to escape the destruction.  They simply watched as all of the experimental subjects except one were destroyed by the cataclysmic power surging around them.

The rising dust from the shockwave did nothing to obscure the fiery violet eyes of the small genius standing among the bodies of his siblings.  Pure amethyst fury was the last thing the two doctors ever saw, his nerve-racking howls ringing in the air long after anyone remained to hear them.

*     *     *

Fully one hundred twenty of the Kaze division still stood.  It had the highest percentage of survivors of all of the groups despite having some of the strictest doctors and generals monitoring the group.

Despite the strict control, several of the subjects perpetually broke rank to sneeze, scratch itches or stretch weary muscles.  Something in the mix of administered chemicals had rendered a number of the children slightly unstable and fairly disobedient.  The doctors and generals had shown no mercy in reprimanding the errant youths.  Yet despite their efforts, one of the young boys perpetually defied them.  At the moment, he was sitting sprawled across the soft dirt of the field they were in, his head sagging as he napped, unconcerned that he was not standing at attention as was the remainder of the division.

The leading doctor scowled at his lax figure, considering having him terminated again.  They had tried once almost seven months prior, but the lethal injection they had administered had not killed the child.  He had merely been nauseous for a few days.  The head physician had been afraid to try again, worried that the subject would become suspicious and retaliate.  Although extremely stubborn and insubordinate, the boy was exceedingly powerful.

The man in the white coat cleared his throat loudly.

"Three eighty-three!"

With a loud snort, the sleeping five-year-old came to attention.  Grumbling softly, he staggered to his feet and stumped his way to the front of the group, blinking dazedly at the doctor that had called him forward.  While waiting for his orders, he scratched his ass absently, further rumpling his already disheveled uniform.

When he didn't receive an immediate order, he scowled up at the doctor still watching him apprehensively.

"What now?" he demanded, huffing slightly.

"Normal exercise," the doctor snapped, trying to sound as if he were in control even though he was honestly unsure of the situation.

Snorting, the boy turned to face a mobile suit in the distance.  Without pausing to think about it, he made a slashing motion with his arm.  The unmanned suit dropped instantly into two pieces.  Several seconds later, a backlash of wind roared across the ranks of subjects and doctors.  The generals had already taken cover.

Before the winds could die down, one of the doctors pulled a gun out of his coat and leveled it at the insolent youth, pulling the trigger several times while the boy was still distracted.  The supervising physician took a horrified step back.  The slugs had stopped a foot from their target, the small bits of metal hovering harmlessly in the air beside the small test subject.

Calmly, the boy turned to face the hovering bullets.  A moment later, his gaze flickered to the frozen doctor still holding the gun.  A bored look settled on his face.  With a negligent movement of his fingers, he sent the bullets back in the direction they had come from at well over twice their original speed.  The armed doctor swayed slightly before collapsing, blood pooling around his still form faster than the earth could absorb it.

The head physician stared in shock, mind reeling.  The child had actively attacked them.  Despite all of the training and mind control they had exerted on the subjects, he had fought back.  His dark eyes locked with deadly violet.  The boy had stopped, but he had still killed a doctor.  Worse, he wasn't sure that they'd be able to terminate the subject if they tried.  Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he made a decision.

"Kaze division," he said loudly, projecting his voice to the entire group easily.  He was inwardly surprised that his voice was still steady.  Steeling himself, he waited until every eye in the group rested on him, awaiting his order.  "Exterminate three eighty-three."

Silence met his order.  Every eye moved to stare at the insubordinate subject still standing at the front of the group, but no winds rose to follow the command.  The boy slated for termination looked at him steadily, a small smile on his pale face.

"What are you waiting for?  Kill him!" he bellowed at the group.  All the blood drained from his face when the boy smirking at him raised one hand to point at him.

"Kill _him_," three eighty-three called over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the doctor's face.

The officers watching in horror saw the air around the doctor shift slightly.  An instant later, a fine pink mist rose into the air around a pile of shredded flesh and blood.  Seconds ticked by slowly, dragging through time as an eternity, broken only when one of the younger officers collapsed to his knees and retched loudly.  The sound broke the senior officers from their shock, many of them attempting to flee.  Only the three oldest of the generals remained, watching with a numb sense of finality as the group of children looked to the rebel subject for instructions.

The insubordinate child opened his mouth to order the group to something, falling short as his glittering violet eyes glazed over in a heartbeat.  The remaining generals watched with a growing sense of horror as every face whipped violently to the southwest to face the main compound miles away.

Pained howls ripped from the subjects' throats as their tortured minds responded to whatever was tearing at their very souls.  The weaker children were ripped apart instantly, unable to withstand the fierce winds.  Within seconds, some of the stronger subjects began to fall to the slashing blades of air, blood pooling in the winds as powers amassed.

The observing generals were obliterated instantly, the retreating officers moments later.  One of the younger officers who had gotten much further than his peers glanced over his shoulder in time to see a single figure still standing amid the gore of his former siblings.  Unopposed, the power of the last subject roared to its zenith, sheer energy bursting free of former constraints to flatten the terrain for miles in every direction.

To Be Continued…

Originally, I was intending on posting ALL of the Shinigami divisions in this section.  But then I realized that I haven't posted in forever and that people were probably getting impatient.  I'll finish with the remainder of the divisions in the next part as well as the reason behind their sudden insanity.

R&R!!!

Um… translations… yeah…

Honoo – fire

Mizu – water

Daichi – earth

Kaze – wind

Did I miss anything?  Oh well, the next section will have an almighty list at the end with stats and numbers and stuff.  I'm sure I'll get it all then.


	15. Chapter 15

The doctors watching the Kage division had been watching the group warily for several months.  The children had begun to associate with the Juuryoku division, and the two groups were teaching each other abilities that neither group should be capable of.  Generals and physicians alike had been rather horrified when the subjects had suddenly begun walking through walls and other solid objects.

Although reluctant to concede any point for fear of losing control of the subjects, the doctors in charge of the two groups had grudgingly combined the two groups into one during training sessions.  They had decided that they were willing to risk the children becoming uncontrollable in return for the additional power they were accumulating.

The head physician present glanced at the charts in his hands while the other doctors and observing generals waited silently.  He stared intently at the information on the boy in the Kage division that was supposedly responsible for the groups mingling.  His numbers were the first in the group to skyrocket and his abilities still surpassed his peers'.  He glanced up at the boy, wondering if the last line on the sheet could possibly be true.  The subject was standing at attention along with the rest of the group, completely docile.

"Five forty-six," he called, eyes narrowing slightly.  "Come to the front of the group without physically moving."

The boy blinked at the order, but nodded sharply a second later.  Inky blackness spread outwards around his feet, covering the ground with a stretch of shadow incarnate.  The moment the darkness was shoulder width, he sank into the obsidian depths, disappearing from view.  A matching patch of onyx appeared on the earth several paces from the doctor, the five-year-old rising out of it calmly.

The physician gripped the charts so tightly that his knuckles bled to white and his hands shook.  The information was true.  The subject could completely immerse himself in his element and travel through it.  He glanced at the other doctors, all of which were staring at the boy in horror.  It was only a step up from walking through walls, but it was worrying that the child could move around so freely.  Unchecked.  A sudden thought occurred to him and he had to repress a shudder.

"Without moving from your current location, retrieve an apple from the mess hall," he ordered tightly.

The boy held out one hand, a black sphere forming above his outstretched fingers.  The requested red fruit dropped into his waiting palm, the darkness dissipating once it was in his grasp.  Looking slightly bored, he held out the apple to the physician, who snatched it and dropped it into a pocket on his white coat.

"Return to your place," he said stiffly.

The boy calmly turned and walked back.  Worried, the physician began shuffling through the charts to the boy in the Juuryoku division that the departing child spent most of his time with.  The elevated numbers made it distressingly simple to locate the other subject.

"Six seventy-eight," he called, eyes still fixed on the chart in disbelief.

He prayed that the last doctor had somehow been exaggerating when he wrote down the sloppy notes at the bottom of the page.  When he looked back up, he didn't see the boy at the front of the group and only then realized that he had not issued an order.  Slightly mollified that the boys were at least obedient, unlike those in the Kaze division, he snapped out a command.

"Fly."

For several seconds, nothing happened.  Then, the clothes on the children began to float gently, suddenly weightless on the slight frames.  Small pebbles began to rise slowly from the ground, floating towards a central point above the Juuryoku division.  Slowly, one of the figures was pulled off of the ground, drawn inexorably towards the new center of gravity that had formed above the group.  When he was two stories above the earth, his ascent ceased and he simply floated in place, awaiting new orders.

Drawing a deep breath to steady himself, the doctor looked back to his charts, trying to ignore the muttered prayers from the generals a few paces away.  The ability to control gravity had been intended only to control battles in zero gravity.  They had discovered early on that the children could increase the gravitational pull in one area so immensely that a mobile suit could be crushed like a tin can.  However, they had never imagined that the children would have fine enough control to move like that.

He looked up again to issue the order for the boy to return to his place.  What he saw in that instant made his blood run cold and he inadvertently stepped back.  As one, every child in both groups snapped their heads towards the main compound, violet eyes blazing in cold fury.  The first blood-chilling howls came from the boy still floating above the rest of the group and the prodigy in the Kage division, the other children crying out a heartbeat later.

The doctors and generals were thrown to the ground from the sudden continual flux of the gravitational pull around them.  Only the disorganization of the group kept the gravity close enough to normal limits not to kill them instantly.  Tendrils of shadow whipped around like living things, dissolving anything they touched.  An ocean of blackness swelled outward from a single child, roaring over the remainder of the group like an obsidian tidal wave.  Those not immediately disintegrated were crushed an instant later from the burst of gravity from the still hovering figure above them, too high in the air to be in danger from the searing darkness.  The only Kage survivor was pushed into the sanctuary of his own shadows from the forces above him as the remaining children were flattened by the powers they could not defend themselves against.

*     *     *

Several miles away, a young doctor who was late to arrive on the practice grounds was standing outside of his car, staring in a mixture of horror and morbid fascination as the skies above the site grew preternaturally dark for a few moments before the blackness was forced into the earth.  He could only watch helplessly as the roiling power suddenly burst outwards, trees and buildings flattening from the unfathomable, uncontrolled power of the subjects.  The young man stood calmly as his death approached.

"My God," he breathed.  "What have we done?"

The powers overtook him.

*     *     *

Several dozen doctors circulated the room where the Denki division, well known among the doctors and other divisions for being cold and calculating bastards, sat at their assigned computers, working silently.  Each had been assigned to bypass the most complicated firewalls and security safeguards that could be found.  Without a mouse or keyboard.

Most of the children had a hand placed somewhere on the computer, whether it be the monitor or tower.  One of the boys had dismantled the tower casing and had his hand submerged in the wires connected to the motherboard.  Sparks of electricity visibility crackled between his hand and the wires.  A doctor stopped to observe him, eyes widening when he took in the scene.

The boy was sitting perfectly still, taking slow, shallow breaths.  Information flickered by on the screen so rapidly that the computer could barely keep up.  Leaning forward, the doctor examined the boy's face.  His eyes were closed, moving rapidly beneath the lids as though responding to the information flitting across the screen.

Curious, the doctor turned his attention to the screen.  He blanched and nearly gagged on his own tongue.  Almost thirty windows were open, all of them flickering wildly between various sites, all of which should have been secure.  No window stayed on a page for more than a mere second.  Several sites that were clearly bank accounts being altered might have gone by, but they passed too quickly for the doctor to see.

On every other computer in the room, the details of a hidden account flashed on the screen for a millisecond.  One hundred eleven responses flickered back to the initiating computer in a heartbeat, varying between acknowledgement of the information to additions to the account.  Though he had been watching avidly, the doctor never saw the responses.

Stunned by the sheer amount of information the child was able to process, the doctor flipped one hand into the air, knowing it would attract the attention of the other physicians.  In under a minute, the remaining doctors had clustered around him, waiting for further information.  His explanation simply consisted of pointing at the screen.

"He's getting faster," one of the senior physicians murmured, unaware of the attention he was garnering.

"What can he do, exactly?" a general asked, pushing his way in and peering over the boy's shoulder.

Before the doctors could warn him of the danger of his actions, he laid his hand lightly on the shoulder of the slender youth as he leaned to glance at the screen.  Electricity arched through the offending appendage.  The general stiffened involuntarily, the raw current racing through his body locking his muscles and stopping his heart.  Only seconds after making contact, faster than the doctors could compensate for his reckless move, smoke was rising from his skin.  By the time he was knocked loose by a well-aimed kick from one of the younger doctors, only seconds after his folly, he was already dead.

"Eight nineteen requires lessons in control," the head physician murmured to himself, quickly scrawling notes on the chart.  He paused in his scrawling when a loud shuffling sound echoed around him.  Uncertain, he raised his gaze and promptly froze.

Every child had turned to face south, eyes still flickering with the unlimited knowledge they were privy to over the internet connections they had tapped into.  Slowly, the gaze of the children shifted to face the boy the doctors had been watching only seconds ago.  He swayed slightly in his seat, visibly struggling with himself.  A muffled whimper escaped his lips.  He hyperventilated for several breaths before throwing his head back and howling in pain and despair, the rest of the division following his shriek of pain a mere breath later.

Lightening skittered across the ceiling, slowly building in power until the fiberglass tiles began to char from the current.  The power surged down to several dozen of the children vying for power before singling out the most powerful of the group.  Doctors, generals and children alike slumped under the energy, unable to survive the unadulterated force rippling through the air.

Electricity arched through the room long after anyone was alive to witness the pure energy that sparked from the sole survivor of the division.  Tears threatening to fall from his amethyst eyes and his jaw trembling in hopelessness and pain, the sole surviving youth could only shriek his agony and desolation to the heavens as everyone he had ever known was destroyed by the power he could no longer control.

To Be Continued…

Sorry for the delay and for this part being extremely short.  Medical school is treating my skull like a piñata and is beating my brains out.  I intended on getting all of the sections out with this part, but real life intervened.  The next section should do it.  Maybe.

Please say you love me and R&R!!!

Kage – shadow

Juuryoku – gravity

Denki – electricity


	16. Chapter 16

Fully twice the size of the other groups, the Chikara division stood two hundred and nineteen strong.  Having lost only thirty-one subjects, the section was the second largest in size of all of the nine divisions.

Though the children in the group had no inconceivable powers to control the world around them, they were still adept in their own rights.  They were infinitely stronger than any of the other subjects and their endurance knew almost no limits and between the two attributes, they were dangerous.  The doctors constantly assessing the group were painfully aware of that fact.  There had been a few accidents on the testing range.  Unsurprisingly, none of the children had been hurt.

The head physician wandered through the smaller groups the subjects had been broken into, taking notes and snapping an occasional order to the other doctors.  The generals stayed far out of the way after what had happened the previous week.  Three of them had been crushed by a mobile suit that one of the boys had accidentally dropped.  The children around them had been unharmed despite being under the several ton machine.

Making a quick note to move the weight lifting trials further away from observers, he looked up in time to witness another of the foot races.  His eyes widened.  Flipping pages in his charts quickly, he scribbled down a few notes on two of the subjects.  They had just been clocked at over fifty miles per hour.  Granted, some of the boys from the Kage and Juuryoku divisions had been timed at sixty and one of the girls in the Mizu division had come in at well over ninety, but it was still impressive.

Curious, he flipped to the nearby charts depicting their physical strengths and quickly looked up the two boys.  Dark eyes widened in shock.  They were far ahead of the rest of the division.  He wondered how he had been so blind to miss the staggering difference in numbers for so long.

"Ten thirty-one and ten eighty-four," he barked.  "Front and center."

Not even breathing heavily after their display, the two indicated boys jogged obediently to stand before the head physician, silently awaiting his order.  The physician nodded to himself, pleased that the subjects in his division were obedient.  He hadn't yet been forced to kill any of them for insubordination.

He pointed to the open range far from the group and observing generals to an inactivated mobile suit.

"Destroy it."

Undaunted by the command, the boys sprinted to the hulking metal figure, reaching their full running speeds within the first two steps of their dash.  As a single unit, they skidded to a halt by the legs of the unmoving suit, each of them latching their small arms to one of the massive metal ankles.  Hands sunk into the metal as though into soft clay.  Without conferring with one another, the two five-year-olds reared back, lifting the suit off of the ground.  For a mere moment, nothing happened.  Then, with an ear-splitting screech of protesting metal, the several ton suit was split like a wishbone, the halves tossed carelessly aside.

Done with their assigned task, the two boys began a leisurely trot back to await further orders.

Almost upon the physician, they stumbled, showing the first signs of clumsiness any of the children had ever displayed.  They maintained their footing, but slowed to a halt, eyes glazing over.  Before the head physician could yell at them, he became aware of the pressing stillness around him.  He scanned the area with wide eyes, his face going pale.

All of the children were standing perfectly motionless and silent, violet eyes fixed to the north.  Screams began to split the air, the children's cries lost in the explosions around them.  Waves of fire and wind buffeted the doctors and subjects alike, driving them to huddle against the ground helplessly.  The earth below them heaved, splitting to form deep chasm.  Dozens were lost into the split in the earth, their screams suddenly understood when magma poured from the crack in the planet.

The two boys who had been returning from the mobile suit spun to face each other, drawing their fists back to strike.  Darkness began to descend upon them as they lashed out, fists meeting midway.  The impact created a shockwave, the force of their twinned blows lashing outwards to drive the powers of the other divisions away.  The two surviving generals and sole surviving doctor watched in horror as the rolling wave of power overtook the remainder of the division in a heartbeat, tearing them apart.  An instant later, the wave reached them.

The two boys continued to scream, their voices lost in the maelstrom of power.

*     *     *

Although the division had started out with three hundred seventy-five subjects, thrice the number of the other groups, Terekineshisu to Terepashii had only one hundred fifty-seven survivors remaining.  All of the children were small.  Frail.  Yet, they never became ill and none of them remained injured for long.

Due to the importance of the group, each subject had a personal instructor.  The individual attention was necessary, each of the students progressing at different speeds and with massive differences in abilities.  Sixteen supervising doctors circulated the division, taking detailed notes on the children and reporting anything relevant to the head physician.  Three of the children, two boys and one girl, were testing immeasurably higher than the remainder of the division.  Five, all boys, were well behind were they should be.  And a single boy, thinner and sicklier than his peers, was at a total loss.

Hearing that report for the thousandth time, the doctor in charge of the division cursed under his breath as he double-checked his charts.  Dismissing the supervising physician, he stalked across the room, intent on learning why the boy was unable to use any of the abilities that should have been programmed into his very being.  The young woman whom he had pushed aside bit her lip and trotted after him.

"Sir?" she began, only to be cut off.

"Not now," he growled.

"Sir," she continued doggedly, refusing to be brushed off.

"Yes?" the head physician inquired, only half listening.

His attention was on the boy only a few steps from him who was cowering on the floor in front of his frustrated trainer.  So far, the boy had managed to do nothing that the group had been engineered to do.  He could neither master telekinesis nor telepathy as his peers had managed long ago.  His trainer was beginning to grow frustrated, the numerous bruises on the boy's face and arms speaking silently of his irritation.

Before he could begin to yell at the boy, he was deterred again by the young woman beside him.

"I have a bad feeling about this," she muttered, refusing to meet his gaze directly, instead keeping her eyes masked by her overlong caramel bangs.  "We… we shouldn't be toying with something so dangerous."

"Why not?  A weapon is a weapon."

"They're only children," the younger doctor murmured.  Seeing the impatient look from her superior, she continued in a stronger voice, still not meeting his eyes.  "What happens when they get older and decide they don't want to listen anymore?  What happens when we lose control?"

"Any of them who won't obey will be terminated."

"Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt," the younger woman grumbled.

"What was that, Damia?"

The young woman straightened, glaring outright and grinding her teeth audibly.  She locked glares with the older man, refusing to back down.

"I've been thinking about this for a few years now," she spat.  "We're dealing with something that we never should have and I quit.  I want out before we lose control of this… this crime against nature!  You're going to lose control and I don't want to be here when that happens."

"Keep your voice down!"

"No, I will not!  Don't you understand?  When they've finally had enough, there's nothing that can stop them from breaking free!"

"Damia!"

"You cannot control them," she said in a pained voice that resounded clearly through the room.  "I'm not going to stay to see you lose control.  And as well you should.  This isn't right."

"Enough!  Get out!"

Flinching visibly under the roar of the head physician, she turned and slunk out of the lab.  Doctors, generals and children alike watched her leave, her words still resounding loudly through their minds.  Cursing again, the head physician rounded on the cowering boy.  Sighing, his personal trainer spoke up for the first time.

"Dr. Barton," he started tentatively.  "The boy is a failure.  He has yet to display any sort of ability beyond what a normal five-year-old would be capable of."  He sighed loudly and scrubbed one hand through his already messy hair.  The tangles in his blond mop spoke loudly of the nervous habit that portrayed his frustration.  "He is a waste of time.  I… I recommend that we terminated him."

"We should not be wasting time and money on worthless specimens," Barton spat, scrubbing his short graying hair out of his eyes.  He turned his dull eyes on the shivering boy at his feet, scowling darkly.  "This is your last chance, fourteen eighteen."  The boy nodded miserably, staring intently at the floor.  Barton scowled, lashing out with a booted foot and kicking the small child in the stomach.  The boy curled around himself, gasping silently.  "You are not to move," he hissed.

"Sir," the trainer objected softly, trailing off at the furious glare he received.  Swallowing, he gathered his courage and plowed on.  "We're going to kill him anyways, sir.  There's no need to torture him."

"I have permission from Romefeller to do as I wish," Barton snapped.  "If I want to skin him alive, that's my call.  Do you understand?"  The instructor dropped his head and nodded miserably.

"Yes, sir."

"What about you, fourteen eighteen?" he snarled.  "Do you understand?"

Rather than answering aloud, the boy rolled to his feet and stood at attention, grinding his teeth down on his tongue as he fought to refrain from gasping for air.  His features remained impassive, emotionless.  Barton grunted, disappointed that he couldn't find something to punish the boy for.  Irritated, his eyes roved around for the nearest object with which to test the boy.  His eyes fell on the chair the trainer was sitting in.  The man scrambled out of his seat.  Barton nodded stiffly.

"Fourteen eighteen," he clipped icily.  "Move the chair."

The boy's head turned minutely to face the object he had been ordered to shift, his features scrunching up slightly in concentration.  The rolling chair remained exactly where it was.  A look of despair crossed the five-year-old child's face.  Barton backhanded him, the ring on his right hand cutting a long gouge along the boy's cheek.

"Fuck this," Barton growled, drawing a gun from the holster at his hip.  Frightened violet eyes rose to stare at his impassive face.  "I don't have time to concern myself with you.  Good riddance, brat."

"You cannot control us," the boy said suddenly, repeating what Damia had said only moments before.  He plowed on before Barton could open his mouth, a note of desperation entering his childish voice.  "We're children.  We'll get older.  You cannot control us forever!"

"Either way, you won't live to see it," Barton sneered.  He pulled the trigger.

Blood splattered across the floor.  Violet eyes widened in disbelief, pupils dilating to obscure the pure amethyst color.  The boy sank to his knees, bony arms wrapping miserably around the bullet hole in his narrow chest.  A feeble cough escaped his lungs and he curled tighter around himself, raising pleading eyes to the man in front of him.  Barton aimed for a second shot at the boy's chest.  A second deafening crack resounded through the room.

Terror and agony swept across the youthful face, freezing his features just at the brink of tears.  He gulped a breath in defiance of his crippled lungs, swallowing the blood pooling in his mouth.  Muscles rippled across his face, pulling his features into a furious scowl.  He lunged to his feet just as Barton pulled the trigger a third time, staggering as the bullet ripped through his abdomen.  His expression shifted to pure loathing.

He arched his head back, a howl of pain and betrayal escaping his throat.  Violet light flared in the room around his trembling form.  The three holes in his trunk and the deep gouge along his cheek sealed themselves in an amethyst burst of energy.  Dried flecks of blood rose into the air from the wounds.  Everyone began to back away as the youth rose into the air, fire and lightening crackling in the winds whipping around his slight form.

Barton spun to flee, skidding to a horrified stop at the sight that met his eyes.  The remaining one hundred fifty-six subjects in the Terekineshisu to Terepashii division were facing the rampaging boy, all of them surrounded by blinding violet light.  One by one, they threw their heads back, their cries of fury joining their brother's.

Terrified, Barton attempted to escape, the doctors and generals a half a step behind him.  He twisted his ankle in a desperate attempt to stop his mad dash towards the door that was engulfed in the blackness of the purest shadows.  Backpedaling brought him face to face with a wall of razor sharp wisps of water surrounding piles of mutilated flesh that only seconds ago had been his colleagues.  The earth bucked, nearly sending him into the deadly wall of water.  A wave of intensified gravity flattened him to the floor before he was abruptly minced, the sudden force crushing him to the floor as the earth roiled a second time.  A spike of granite erupted from the ground, piercing his thigh and holding him captive.  Barton forced his gaze up in time to see a devastating shockwave of power descend upon him.

His death was only the beginning.  The boundless powers roiled across every doctor, general and experimental subject in the immediate area, surging outwards in an arc of irrefutable power.

Of the thousands in the radius of the psychic explosion, only ten survived.

*     *     *

Damia ran from the testing range, desperately straining to gain distance before the inevitable.  She leapt onto her motorcycle, not bothering with her helmet in her haste.  As she skidded to a halt near the final check point, frantically keying in her personal code, she snapped her face up to the security camera, a feral grin crossing her elfin features.  Her wide violet eyes glittered up at the camera.

"Get 'em, G," she growled.

Gassing her bike, she surged forward in an explosive burst of acceleration, leaning forward viciously to prevent her bike from pulling into a wheelie.  The winds whipping around her wiry form pulled her hair out of her white lab coat, the hip-length golden brown braid flying behind her as she sped away from the compound.

*     *     *

Treize stared at his computer in disbelief for several seconds before his mind short-circuited.

_Does not compute… floating point error… invalid argument… syntax error… division by zero… system overload… game over…_

Unable to do anything else, he surrendered to the inevitable and passed out.

*     *     *

In a clear state of shock, four Gundam pilots stared, numbed to the core, at a laptop screen.  Quatre was the first to speak, though what he managed was entirely unhelpful.

"Allah," he squeaked.

"They work for the Romefellers and Bartons," Heero growled.  His cobalt eyes narrowed and focused in on Trowa.  The European pilot paled.

"It's just a code name!" Trowa protested, backing away several paces, emerald eyes wide.  Heero grunted.

"It's obvious that the Maxwells aren't fond of the people who… who created them," Wufei ground out.

"I think we can trust them," Quatre said softly, his hands pressed firmly to his chest.  "I can feel it."

"I want to know why they haven't been using their abilities before now," Heero growled.  "We could have won this war by now!"

"There could be a reason we don't know about," Wufei said reasonably, slowly turning purple as he forced himself to defend the braided lunatics.  "It would be dishonorable to accuse them without knowing the reasons behind their actions."

"There's something else that the rest of you missed," Trowa managed weakly.  When he had all of their attentions, he looked up with haunted eyes.  "The doctor that escaped.  Damia."  When no one seemed to understand, he exploded.  "Didn't you see her?  She looked just like them!  And her name… Damia is Greek for 'goddess of the forces of nature.'  Don't you get it?  Their mother survived!"

The other pilots paled.

*     *     *

"Well, they know," Dante muttered.  "Now what?"

The clustered Maxwells glanced at each other somberly for several seconds.  The solemn atmosphere was abruptly shattered when Darren grinned.

"Now we don't have to hold back," he chuckled, eyes glinting evilly.

To Be Continued…

I know, I know.  I'm taking forever.  Forgive the poor hapless student who has to read and memorize 500 pages a night.  And I can too use the medical student excuse forever.  Or at least for the next few years.  This is hard, man.  I've seen one class, one single hour of lecture, cover more than an entire course did in a semester of college.  I can never express my joy at seeing all of my experience of histology and biochemistry shoot by in less than three hours of lecture.  I'm just thankful that we don't have to do the whole organic chemistry lab thing again.  My best friend and I were responsible for a building being evacuated in undergrad.  (Sadly enough, that is not a joke.)  Chemicals and I simply do not mix.  O_O;

On the bright side, now that I'm done with their pasts, I can get back to their psychotic behavior.  R&R!!!

Damia, in case you're wondering, actually is a Greek name meaning 'Goddess of forces of nature.'  I wasn't making that up.  I saw it while poking around online and I couldn't resist.  Can you blame me?

Now for the notes I promised…

Division – English translation – survivor

Honoo – fire – 14 (Derrick)

Mizu – water – 180 (Deut)

Daichi – earth – 312 (Donovan)

Kaze – air – 383 (Darren)

Kage – shadow – 546 (Dustin)

Juuryoku – gravity – 678 (Duo)

Denki – electricity – 819 (Dante)

Chikara – strength – 1031, 1084 (David, Daniel)

Terekineshisu to Terepashii – telekinesis and telepathy – 1418 (Demitri)

Oh!  Be sure to check out a companion fic by Srsilverhawk.  She's writing a story called Shinigami Rising that goes into the lives of the kids of the Shinigami Project.  She now has the first part up.  Go read it!


	17. Chapter 17

Ten figures huddled together in a secluded safe house, not far from one of Quatre's many pink mansions, where four paranoid pilots were currently hiding.

"Come on, does _anyone_ have an idea?" Deut pleaded.

"Not as such, no," Dustin said.

"We have to do _something_ to them!" Duo objected.

There was a moment of silence as the ten braided maniacs considered the possibilities of what they could do to their unsuspecting victims.  Actually, their victims suspected a great deal, but the black-clad lunatics didn't care.

"I've got it!" Darren suddenly announced.

"Got what, the DTs?" Dante asked.

"Head lice?" Donovan supplied.  After that, they all joined in.

"Jock itch?"

"A tapeworm?"

"Fleas?"

"Hemorrhoids?"

"Mad cow disease?"

"Crotch rot?"

"Implants?"

"Crabs?"

"Your period?"

"Male pattern baldness?"

"Ringworm?"

"Scabies?"

"Debilitating dandruff?"

"Impotence?"

"Incontinence?"

"Your first pube?"

"Abnormal hair growth?"

"PMS?"

"I hate you all," Darren snapped, interrupting the hysterical group.  "Do we want to torment them or not?"

"We still get to pick on you, right?" Donovan asked.

"Not if you want to live," Darren growled.

"Who do we hit first?" Duet asked.  "Oz or our poor helpless colleagues?"

"What about Romefeller?" Daniel protested.

"We're not going to torture them," Dante said.  "We're going to blow them up.  So it's still the original decision."

"How about both at the same time?" Duo suggested.

"All right," Dustin seconded.

"It'd be more fun if we hit them one at a time to maximize the damage," David said.

"True," Duo conceded.  "Oz first then.  Cripple the opposition before the allies."

"Good point," Duet said.  "Darren?"

"Well, for maximum torture, we'll have to first consume five pounds of chocolate apiece," he said.  "Everything is more fun on a sugar rush."

"Duh," Derrick said.  "Get on with the plan."

"And if I don't?"

"Then all your extracurricular privileges shall be revoked," Derrick smirked.

"That's just cold," Darren protested, pouting.  "Fine.  First off, we'll need several hundred empty data disks, twenty tubes of superglue, ninety wild hogs and forty pounds of Crisco…"

*     *     *

Zechs fought the urge to beat his head against his desk after receiving the latest field report.  Treize decided to ask what was wrong before the suddenly masochistic blond gave himself a concussion.

"What is it now?"

"A flight arrived this morning with the following teenagers.  Nicholas Everett, Edward Netter, Esteban Richardson, Norman Erickson, Ethan Norris, Erick Reed, Nori Evans, Earnest Newman and Earl Rhodes," the blond groaned.  Treize paused a moment to tally the initials.  Nine names plus one absence for a traveling Gundam.  He sighed.

"Neener neener neener," Treize finally said.

"We're dead."

*     *     *

"I still don't see what this has to do with our powers," Dustin protested for the twentieth time.  "And why did I get stuck with you two?"

"Who said it had to focus on our abilities?" Darren countered, fiddling with a computer terminal.  "And you're with us because we have to be able to move through secured locations without being detected."

"And that would be my particular power," Dustin growled.  "Are we using them or not?"

"We're going for the torment factor," Derrick said.  "We're not here to show off."

"Even so, can we?" Dustin asked.

"You should probably refrain," Darren said.  "We can't have you tired if we need you."

"Fair enough," Dustin conceded, looking slightly depressed at the decision.  "But I still demand to be amused while here.  I'll be right back."

"Who are you after?"

"Zechs.  Who else?"

"As long as it isn't Treize," Darren said, mostly occupied with the computer.  "You know that Demitri already claimed him."

"I know," Dustin said.  "But I still have to wonder.  Where in the hell did he find four hundred vampire bats?"

"Don't know. Don't want to know.  Safer that way.  Besides, I'm more concerned with what Dante is doing with almost a ton of fish guts."

"Not sure.  He said something about electrical outlets and bungee cords," Derrick supplied.

"Great," Dustin said sarcastically.  "You done with those disks yet?"

"Almost," Darren responded.  "You have time to do whatever it is you're planning to do to Zechs.  I'll be ready for the superglue when you get back."

"Perfect."

"I take it that means you got the thirty thousand gallons of rubber cement you ordered?" Derrick asked drolly.

"Of course."

To Be Continued…

Sorry about the delay.  Next section should be sooner and longer.  And for the hardcore fanatics, Srsilverhawk has a work in progress that goes into the lives of the purple-eyed lunatics when they were five years old.  It's called Shinigami Rising.  On behalf of both of us, R&R!


	18. Chapter 18

Deut was playing with the pipes again, as was her favorite tactic to annoy Oz.  With a bit of redirecting of a few major pipes and a few hundred pounds of quick drying putty, she had flooded every mobile suit on the base.  Whenever the cockpits were opened, the unfortunate pilots would get instant baths.  It was likely that only a few of the pilots would suffer that fate before sending out a warning to the others, but Deut wasn't overly upset about it.  The mobile suits were ruined either way.

The only suit she didn't tamper with was Tallgeese.  She left that one to Dustin's twisted mind.  Sure enough, in the middle of filling a set of Aires with water, she saw the other braided loony slip into the hanger, grinning like the madman he was.  She shook her head and proceeded to ignore him as he made use of the thirty thousand gallons of rubber cement he had procured.  The gooey substance was in every wire bundle and circuit board, filling the cockpit and covering the Gundam in a huge mountain of stickiness.

Avoiding the sticky goop covering the floor, Deut scurried out of the hanger and left Dustin to his work.  She had a lot of work to do involving all of the toilets on base and a huge bag of cherry bombs tied to her belt.  Childish or not, the pranks still caused a lot of damage.

*     *     *

David and Daniel were running interference for the others.  Together, they had rounded up a fairly good number of the personnel on base and stuffed them into various closets.  To be more insulting than anything, they used an age-old method to jam the doors closed.  Nails.  And lots of them.  A few people that they thought strong enough to kick down the doors ended up thrown in car trunks.

One soldier, a huge burly man that was the type no one ever wanted to meet in a dark alley, managed to get in a lucky punch.  A rather stolid blow across the jaw only served to tick David off.  The soldier ended up at the top of a flagpole dangling from his ankles, butt-naked and covered in bits of fish parts stapled to his body.

*     *     *

Duo and Donovan had teamed up to massacre the computer systems.  Donovan was reprogramming systems, installing new programs and introducing a set of viruses and worms that he had personally created.  Duo was filling the towers with crickets.  Where he had acquired almost fifty thousand live crickets, no one really wanted to know.

Dante passed by them as they were working, an evil smirk on his face.  In one hand, he had several bungee cords.  In the other, a bucket of fish guts.  Duo glanced at him curiously as he opened an electrical socket, hooked up the bungee cord to work as a slingshot, stuffed a mass of slimy intestines in front of the bungee recoil path and delicately replaced the socket covering.  At the slightest touch, the entire thing would be set off, showering anyone in the vicinity with rotting fish organs.  From the looks of it, Dante had accidentally set off one or two while setting them up.  As it was, he wasn't riding back with the rest of them.  The brunette teen dripping with fish guts apparently figured that out early on, because he had stolen Zechs's car keys.  After escaping, he would roll on all the upholstery before abandoning the car.

David jogged by, saluting his siblings as he passed.  Over his shoulder was a squirming hostage he had hogtied.  Upon closer inspection it appeared to be Noin.  The dark-haired woman was kicking him nonstop, though he seemed to be ignoring her.  She let out a poorly gagged cry when she spotted the other two Maxwells tampering with the computers.  Being told that there were a whole army of the insane Americans was one thing, seeing them was another entirely.

Noin's scream echoed through the building a moment later, not wholly hindered by the gag wrapped around her head.  Her cry was followed an instant later by a deeper, masculine voice sounding out in deference to its tormented owner.  Dante gave David a questioning look when he reappeared minus his hostage.

"What did you do to her?" Dante asked, shocked.  It wasn't that he cared much about the fate of Oz officials, but Noin had clearly been upset.  "And who was the other guy?"

"I don't know what happened to her exactly," David shrugged.  "I gave her to Dustin.  Last I saw, he was converging on Noin and Zechs with a hot glue gun."

"I thought he was last seen with the rubber cement," Dante muttered.

"He apparently finished," David smirked.

"Where's Daniel?" Dante suddenly asked.  "He was supposed to be with you."

David shrugged dismissively.  "I haven't seen him since we hung that guy from the flagpole outside."

"And you have no idea where he went?"

Five thousand car alarms chose that moment to go off, making enough racket to be heard all over the base.  The brothers exchanged wry looks.  Insurance premiums just went through the roof thanks to them.

"I think I know where he is," David smirked.  The smoke alarms and water sprinklers followed his statement.  "And what he set on fire."  He pulled out a small cell phone and punched in a preset number.  "Deut?  Water sprinklers, please."  In the span of three heartbeats, the system was shut back off.  He hung up.  "Not that you don't need the shower," he began.

"Trust me, you're not funny," Dante assured him.  David just smirked.

*     *     *

Treize had been backed into a corner.  The room had only two exits.  One was blocked by Demitri, the braided madman being the only one of the two in the room still armed.  The other exit was a seemingly harmless door.  The only thing that kept the Oz leader from taking the route was the fairly disconcerting screeching noise coming from the other side of the barrier.  That he had been herded masterfully through the building to that very destination, Treize was certain.  He sighed.

"You're still mad about one of your brothers being held hostage, aren't you?" he asked in a somewhat defeated tone.

"That would have been me," Demitri said, violet eyes flashing.  "You know, I never got a chance to fully extend my gratitude that you didn't actually shoot me."

Treize didn't care for his tone of voice.  He eyed the door containing the screeching noise, seriously considering going through it.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, amazed that his voice was still steady.

"Behold," Demitri said theatrically, waving one hand towards the mystery door.  "A room filled with four hundred vampire bats."  Treize's eyebrows shot towards his hair line, the look of shock mingling with mild confusion as to what the teenager planned to do to him.  "Now gaze upon this squirt gun filled with bat pheromones," Demitri continued, waggling a blue plastic toy.  Treize took a step back, blue eyes widening.  "Did I mention that all of the bats were male?"

"I think that much was obvious," Treize muttered.  He flinched when he was squirted a number of times with the small gun.

"Ever been in a situation that you know you'll be reporting to a therapist some day?" Demitri snickered.

"Not since your last visit."

"Buck up," Demitri grinned, waving him towards the entrance of the room at gunpoint.  "We've only done a few billion dollars in damage."

"Thanks."

Careful not to let any of the winged creatures out, the brunette teen jerked open the door and shoved the Oz leader in, slamming and locking the door behind him.  The last thing he saw was a furry aerial assault upon Treize's huddled form.

To Be Continued…

I got off my butt and did something with the fic after such an extended absence (freak of nature, there's a lot of reading necessary to learn medicine) after someone wrote in and reminded me just how long I was taking.  All I can say is oops…

Up next, learn the mystery of why Darren wanted several hundred empty data disks, twenty tubes of superglue, ninety wild hogs and forty pounds of Crisco…


End file.
